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The Rise of the New McCarthyism

Special Report: As the New McCarthyism takes hold in America, the neocon Washington Post makes Russia the villain in virtually every bad thing that happens, with U.S. dissidents treated as “fellow-travelers,” writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

Make no mistake about it: the United States has entered an era of a New McCarthyism that blames nearly every political problem on Russia and has begun targeting American citizens who don’t go along with this New Cold War propaganda.

Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wisconsin, who led the “Red Scare” hearings of the 1950s.

A difference, however, from the McCarthyism of the 1950s is that this New McCarthyism has enlisted Democrats, liberals and even progressives in the cause because of their disgust with President Trump; the 1950s version was driven by Republicans and the Right with much of the Left on the receiving end, maligned by the likes of Sen. Joe McCarthy as “un-American” and as Communism’s “fellow travelers.”

The real winners in this New McCarthyism appear to be the neoconservatives who have leveraged the Democratic/liberal hatred of Trump to draw much of the Left into the political hysteria that sees the controversy over alleged Russian political “meddling” as an opportunity to “get Trump.”

Already, the neocons and their allies have exploited the anti-Russian frenzy to extract tens of millions of dollars more from the taxpayers for programs to “combat Russian propaganda,” i.e., funding of non-governmental organizations and “scholars” who target dissident Americans for challenging the justifications for this New Cold War.

The Washington Post, which for years has served as the flagship for neocon propaganda, is again charting the new course for America, much as it did in rallying U.S. public backing for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and in building sympathy for abortive “regime change” projects aimed at Syria and Iran. The Post has begun blaming almost every unpleasant development in the world on Russia! Russia! Russia!

For instance, a Post editorial on Tuesday shifted the blame for the anemic victory of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the surprising strength of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) from Merkel’s austerity policies, which have caused hardship for much of the working class, or from her open door for Mideast refugees, which has destabilized some working-class neighborhoods, to – you guessed it – Russia!

The evidence, as usual, is vague and self-interested, but sure to be swallowed by many Democrats and liberals, who hate Russia because they blame it for Trump, and by lots of Republicans and conservatives, who have a residual hatred for Russia left over from the Old Cold War.

The Post cited the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, which has been pushing much of the hysteria about alleged Russian activities on the Internet. The Atlantic Council essentially is NATO’s think tank and is financed with money from the U.S. government, Gulf oil states, military contractors, global financial institutions and many other sources which stand to gain directly or indirectly from the expanding U.S. military budget and NATO interventions.

Blaming Russia

In this New Cold War, the Russians get blamed for not only disrupting some neocon “regime change” projects, such as the proxy war in Syria, but also political developments in the West, such as Donald Trump’s election and AfD’s rise in Germany.

The Atlantic Council’s digital lab claimed, according to the Post editorial, that “In the final hours of the [German] campaign, online supporters of the AfD began warning their base of possible election fraud, and the online alarms were ‘driven by anonymous troll accounts and boosted by a Russian-language bot-net.’”

Of course, the Post evinces no evidence tying any of this to the Russian government or to President Vladimir Putin. It is the nature of McCarthyism that actual evidence is not required, just heavy breathing and dark suspicions. For those of us who operate Web sites, “trolls” – some volunteers and some professionals – have become a common annoyance and they represent many political outlooks, not just Russian.

Plus, it is standard procedure these days for campaigns to issue last-minute alarms to their supporters about possible election fraud to raise doubts about the results should the outcome be disappointing.

The U.S. government has engaged in precisely this strategy around the world, having pro-U.S. parties not only complain about election fraud but to take to the streets in violent protests to impugn the legitimacy of election outcomes. That U.S. strategy has been applied to places such as Ukraine (the Orange Revolution in 2004); Iran (the Green Revolution in 2009); Russia (the Snow Revolution in 2011); and many other locations.

Pre-election alerts also have become a feature in U.S. elections, even in 2016 when both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton raised questions about the legitimacy of the balloting, albeit for different reasons.

Yet, instead of seeing the AfD maneuver as a typical ploy by a relatively minor party – and the German election outcome as an understandable reflection of voter discontent and weariness over Merkel’s three terms as Chancellor – the Atlantic Council and the Post see Russians under every bed and particularly Putin.

Loving to Hate Putin

In the world of neocon propaganda, Putin has become the great bête noire, since he has frustrated a variety of neocon schemes. He helped head off a major U.S. military strike against Syria in 2013; he aided President Obama in achieving the Iran nuclear agreement in 2014-15; Putin opposed and – to a degree – frustrated the neocon-supported coup in Ukraine in 2014; and he ultimately supplied the air power that defeated neocon-backed “rebel” forces in Syria in 2015-17.

President Barack Obama meets with President Vladimir Putin of Russia on the sidelines of the G20 Summit at Regnum Carya Resort in Antalya, Turkey, Sunday, Nov. 15, 2015. National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice listens at left. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

So, the Post and the neocons want Putin gone – and they have used gauzy allegations about “Russian meddling” in the U.S. and other elections as the new propaganda theme to justify destabilizing Russia with economic sanctions and, if possible, engineering another “regime change” project in Moscow.

None of this is even secret. Carl Gershman, the neocon president of the U.S.-government-funded National Endowment for Democracy, publicly proclaimed the goal of ousting Putin in an op-ed in The Washington Post, writing: “The United States has the power to contain and defeat this danger. The issue is whether we can summon the will to do so.”

But the way neocon propaganda works is that the U.S. and its allies are always the victims of some nefarious enemy who must be thwarted to protect all that is good in the world. In other words, even as NED and other U.S.-funded operations take aim at Putin and Russia, Russia and Putin must be transformed into the aggressors.

“Mr. Putin would like nothing better than to generate doubts, fog, cracks and uncertainty around the German pillar of Europe,” the Post editorial said. “He relishes infiltrating chaos and mischief into open societies. In this case, supporting the far-right AfD is extraordinarily cynical, given how many millions of Russians died to defeat the fascists seven decades ago.”

Not to belabor the point but there is no credible evidence that Putin did any of this. There is a claim by the virulently anti-Russian Atlantic Council that some “anonymous troll accounts” promoted some AfD complaint about possible voter fraud and that it was picked up by “a Russian-language bot-net.” Even if that is true – and the Atlantic Council is far from an objective source – where is the link to Putin?

Not everything that happens in Russia, a nation of 144 million people, is ordered by Putin. But the Post would have you believe that it is. It is the centerpiece of this neocon conspiracy theory.

Silencing Dissent

Similarly, any American who questions this propaganda immediately is dismissed as a “Kremlin stooge” or a “Russian propagandist,” another ugly campaign spearheaded by the Post and the neocons. Again, no evidence is required, just some analysis that what you’re saying somehow parallels something Putin has said.

On Tuesday, in what amounted to a companion piece for the editorial, a Post article again pushed the unproven suspicions about “Russian operatives” buying $100,000 in Facebook ads from 2015 into 2017 to supposedly influence U.S. politics. Once again, no evidence required.

In the article, the Post also reminds its readers that Moscow has a history of focusing on social inequities in the U.S., which gets us back to the comparisons between the Old McCarthyism and the new.

Yes, it’s true that the Soviet Union denounced America’s racial segregation and cited that ugly feature of U.S. society in expressing solidarity with the American civil rights movement and national liberation struggles in Africa. It’s also true that American Communists collaborated with the domestic civil rights movement to promote racial integration.

That was a key reason why J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI targeted Martin Luther King Jr. and other African-American leaders – because of their association with known or suspected Communists. (Similarly, the Reagan administration resisted support for Nelson Mandela because his African National Congress accepted Communist support in its battle against South Africa’s Apartheid white-supremacist regime.)

Interestingly, one of the arguments from liberal national Democrats in opposing segregation in the 1960s was that the repression of American blacks undercut U.S. diplomatic efforts to develop allies in Africa. In other words, Soviet and Communist criticism of America’s segregation actually helped bring about the demise of that offensive system.

Yet, King’s association with alleged Communists remained a talking point of die-hard segregationists even after his assassination when they opposed creating a national holiday in his honor in the 1980s.

These parallels between the Old McCarthyism and the New McCarthyism are implicitly acknowledged in the Post’s news article on Tuesday, which cites Putin’s criticism of police killings of unarmed American blacks as evidence that he is meddling in U.S. politics.

“Since taking office, Putin has on occasion sought to spotlight racial tensions in the United States as a means of shaping perceptions of American society,” the article states. “Putin injected himself in 2014 into the race debate after protests broke out in Ferguson, Mo., over the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an African American, by a white police officer.

“‘Do you believe that everything is perfect now from the point of view of democracy in the United States?’ Putin told CBS’s ’60 Minutes’ program. ‘If everything was perfect, there wouldn’t be the problem of Ferguson. There would be no abuse by the police. But our task is to see all these problems and respond properly.’”

The Post’s speculative point seems to be that Putin’s response included having “Russian operatives” buy some ads on Facebook to exploit these racial tensions, but there is no evidence to support that conspiracy theory.

However, as this anti-Russia hysteria spreads, we may soon see Americans who also protest the police killing of unarmed black men denounced as “Putin’s fellow-travelers,” much as King and other civil rights leaders were smeared as “Communist dupes.”

Ignoring Reality

So, instead of Democrats and Chancellor Merkel looking in the mirror and seeing the real reasons why many white working-class voters are turning toward “populist” and “extremist” alternatives, they can simply blame Putin and continue a crackdown on Internet-based dissent as the work of “Russian operatives.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel with her hands in the characteristic Merkel-Raute position. (Photo from Wikipedia)

Already, under the guise of combating “Russian propaganda” and “fake news,” Google, Facebook and other tech giants have begun introducing algorithms to hunt down and marginalize news that challenges official U.S. government narratives on hot-button issues such as Ukraine and Syria. Again, no evidence is required, just the fact that Putin may have said something similar.

As Democrats, liberals and even some progressives join in this Russia-gate hysteria – driven by their hatred of Donald Trump and his supposedly “fascistic” tendencies – they might want to consider whom they’ve climbed into bed with and what these neocons have in mind for the future.

Arguably, if fascism or totalitarianism comes to the United States, it is more likely to arrive in the guise of “protecting democracy” from Russia or another foreign adversary than from a reality-TV clown like Donald Trump.

The New McCarthyism with its Orwellian-style algorithms might seem like a clever way to neutralize (or maybe even help oust) Trump, but – long after Trump is gone – a structure for letting the neocons and the mainstream media monopolize American political debate might be a far greater threat to both democracy and peace.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

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185 comments for “The Rise of the New McCarthyism”

The idea that we are guilty of the same actions as Russians i.e. sabotaging elections, does not mean that we have sacrificed our right to defend ourselves. There is more than a little schadenfreude in this piece, obscuring the fact that these undermining practices are reprehensible for both parties.

Very scarry. But this corruption to bring down our democracy has been long in the making. How can we unite to OVERCOME it? To use a word frome MLK.

Mild-ly Facetious

October 1, 2017 at 2:23 pm

The First White President
The foundation of Donald Trump’s presidency is the negation of Barack Obama’s legacy.

TA-NEHISI COATES
OCTOBER 2017 ISSUE

IT IS INSUFFICIENT TO STATE the obvious of Donald Trump: that he is a white man who would not be president were it not for this fact. With one immediate exception, Trump’s predecessors made their way to high office through the passive power of whiteness—that bloody heirloom which cannot ensure mastery of all events but can conjure a tailwind for most of them. Land theft and human plunder cleared the grounds for Trump’s forefathers and barred others from it. Once upon the field, these men became soldiers, statesmen, and scholars; held court in Paris; presided at Princeton; advanced into the Wilderness and then into the White House. Their individual triumphs made this exclusive party seem above America’s founding sins, and it was forgotten that the former was in fact bound to the latter, that all their victories had transpired on cleared grounds. No such elegant detachment can be attributed to Donald Trump—a president who, more than any other, has made the awful inheritance explicit.

His political career began in advocacy of birtherism, that modern recasting of the old American precept that black people are not fit to be citizens of the country they built. But long before birtherism, Trump had made his worldview clear. He fought to keep blacks out of his buildings, according to the U.S. government; called for the death penalty for the eventually exonerated Central Park Five; and railed against “lazy” black employees. “Black guys counting my money! I hate it,” Trump was once quoted as saying. “The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.” After his cabal of conspiracy theorists forced Barack Obama to present his birth certificate, Trump demanded the president’s college grades (offering $5 million in exchange for them), insisting that Obama was not intelligent enough to have gone to an Ivy League school, and that his acclaimed memoir, Dreams From My Father, had been ghostwritten by a white man, Bill Ayers.

It is often said that Trump has no real ideology, which is not true—his ideology is white supremacy, in all its truculent and sanctimonious power. Trump inaugurated his campaign by casting himself as the defender of white maidenhood against Mexican “rapists,” only to be later alleged by multiple accusers, and by his own proud words, to be a sexual violator himself. White supremacy has always had a perverse sexual tint. Trump’s rise was shepherded by Steve Bannon, a man who mocks his white male critics as “cucks.” The word, derived from cuckold, is specifically meant to debase by fear and fantasy—the target is so weak that he would submit to the humiliation of having his white wife lie with black men. That the slur cuck casts white men as victims aligns with the dicta of whiteness, which seek to alchemize one’s profligate sins into virtue. So it was with Virginia slaveholders claiming that Britain sought to make slaves of them. So it was with marauding Klansmen organized against alleged rapes and other outrages. So it was with a candidate who called for a foreign power to hack his opponent’s email and who now, as president, is claiming to be the victim of “the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history.”https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/the-first-white-president-ta-nehisi-coates/537909/

the latest
guardian: Did Russia fake black activism on Facebook to sow division in the US?
The popular ‘Blacktivist’ account claimed to be a force for community organizing. Now it looks to have been part of Russia’s effort to influence politics

Morgan Freeman’s ad for “The Committee to Investigate Russia” is almost funny, if it weren’t so serious. Why did Freeman, Rob Reiner and others set this up? Because there are already three investigations going that haven’t done anything. So this new committee thinks that the others are incompetent? Which means that REAL AMERICANS like them will step in and do the job?

In his ad, Freeman says that he’s not reading from a script. When he obviously is.
He keeps saying about Putin, once a KGB spy always a KGB spy. Does he know that the KGB doesn’t exist anymore?
This committee says that they’ll be a “depository of relevent information” about Russian interference. Not alleged. But actual interference that has never been proved.
How long did corporate media hype that 17 govt. agencies said it’s true that Putin ordered the election to be hacked? Then finally in ultra tiny print on page 10, the NYT ran a retraction.
Does this committee know or care that if anyone did leak information to them, it’s illegal if it’s classified? Will the Committee pay the legal bills of a hacker who the DOJ charges under the Espionage Act? Will the DOJ go after the committee.

Finally, back in the ’50s, 12 screenwriters were blacklisted by Hollywood for having “Communist connections”. Many of these people didn’t work for up to 20 years. The truth is that Freeman and these others have no actual proof of Russian interference. But obviously they could care less about how ridiculous they look.

Susan Sunflower

September 30, 2017 at 12:42 pm

My lingering impression of “The Vietnam War” is that Ken Burns set out with, if not an agenda, a prejudice that the protest movement had often overstepped its bound, been “disrespectful” of Veterans and were central to the war remaining an open wound and were much more powerful (as opposed to representing a growing popular opinion) than they were. Jane Fonda’s trip to Hanoi was highlighted and has been the subject of a dozen articles, most utterly condemnatory and unforgiving, occurring at a time when she has emerged from decades of minimal activity and exposure. As with other scabs for the media to pick, I doubt she’s surprised, but the personal/political is being used to eclipse and likely silence. It’s so frustrating to watch Trump successfully serially shift the media’s focus to himself and whatever he claims the real issue is — his issue is ostensibly “disrespect” for the flag, veterans(?), our country (?) over protests against our countries prejudice and inequality, police violence and lack of safety (as acquittals and failures to indict make headlines). I don’t think Trump will stop race-baiting until he incites violence that he can similarly spin into media gold… as Ken Burns and others have turned the alleged disrespectful acts of some “peace protestors” mistreatment returning hero veterans into a common lingering image. Not the millions dead, the wounded and never healed, not the shift in civilian acceptance of Vietnam’s brutal war on civilians (and neighboring states) which continue to this day. The arguably “petty” insults of powerless dissenters.

Mild-ly Facetious

October 1, 2017 at 12:34 pm

Good on you, Susan Sunflower for the points you’ve made. Alas, as you well know, all United States CRIMES are covered by the everlasting premise of “American Exceptionalism”. We are the “beacon on a hill” – a light to the world and the “indispensable nation”.

We dropped EIGHTY-EIGHT THOUSAND TONS of bombs on Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia and still to this day have not removed hundreds of barrels of Agent Orange from Viet Nam’s interior.

Actual “disrespect” for the flag is demonstrated the way we decimate other peoples in the world – i.e. Central America, South America, the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, countries on the African continent, Libya, now Yemen, Diego Garcia (which we took over, forcibly removed the citizenry and made it a military base.

Trump swears by the fiction that we ought to always “honor our heritage” — I submit that our vaunted “heritage” is one of violent cruelty and opportunistic selfishness, death and destruction.

That closing line of the national anthem – “land of the free and home of the brave” is a finely applied PSYOP visited upon the non-critical thinking people of America. – We are an hegemonic destructive world power still operating according to the ridged ideology of Allan Dulles’ CIA — That same Dulles who supported the Fascist Nazi’s in the late 30’s and early 40’s.

Our true history is sick with the propagation of acquisition BY ANY MEANS. (Capitalism by ALL means.)

Americans ought to be horrified, appalled and outraged over the sick amounts of money our gov’t takes away from our well-being (WASTES) on military spending WHEN THERE NO ACTUAL THREATS TO OUR NATION!!! Only made-up bullspit such as Saddam or Bin Laden or Qadhafi or Assad or, now, Putin.

As real power waifs upward into fewer and fewer hands (the Koch Brothers, for example) – the tighter the noose will close around the neck(s) of We The People. Then the guns will be turned against Us… .

Mild-ly Facetious

October 2, 2017 at 5:21 pm

for the record… .

Laos: Thousands suffering from the deadly aftermath of US bomb campaign
Fifty years after US combat troops entered Vietnam, neighbouring Laos is still dealing with unexploded bombs from fierce air attacks

Matteo Fagotto
Saturday 31 January 2015 16.04 EST Last modified on Friday 14 July 2017 17.29 EDT
“If I had arrived 15 minutes later at the hospital, I would have died. I underwent 12 blood transfusions in order to survive.” Sitting in the living room of her wooden stilt house, 39-year-old Buan Kham slowly lifted her skirt to expose what remains of her right leg, amputated at the knee. “If I hadn’t gone to the capital, Vientiane, I would have lost both,” she added, caressing the deep scars running along her left thigh.

Less than a year ago Kham, from the rural village of Na Dee, became one of the 20,000 victims of unexploded ordnance (UXO). The weapons are a lethal legacy of the Vietnam war, which turned this poor, landlocked south-east Asia nation of 6 million into the most bombed country per capita in the world.

It is 50 years since the first US combat troops entered Vietnam in March 1965. During that notorious conflict, the US dropped more than 270 million bombs in Laos as part of a CIA-run, top-secret operation aimed at destroying the North Vietnamese supply routes along the Ho Chi Minh trail and wiping out its local communist allies.

One-third of the bombs failed to explode on impact and have since claimed an average of 500 victims a year, mainly children and farmers forced to work on their contaminated fields to sustain their families. Despite tens of millions of dollars spent, only 1% of Laos territory has been cleared so far.

one diffrence today the mc carthysts are the neocons , the american traitors sold to israel…in 1950 theamerican jews the prorussion communist were the target ..and for good reason……

Hide Behind

September 29, 2017 at 9:14 pm

As always, at least to my eyes, when the discussion begins to be taken over nit pickers and detail cross the t and dot the i, the main focus begins to become clouded
MC Carthyism is not so much about the man or communism, it is the symbolism of the effect it had upon all the Democratic principals, memes, of our Republic founders concepts of fairness and judicial foundations.
Even that period of time was not new and clear back to President Madison times we had groups of New England States ready to seccede and form a new nation under English protection.
The term Tories and Unamerican was leveled by the opposing 8 New England states with the Southernmost led by S. Carolina labeling members of Congress as tories because of disparity of Northern states passing abuseive tarrif laws, and violating neutrality laws between French and English nations who were at war with each other.
State rabble trousers led lynching and Tara and feathering of all who disagreed with THE established powers, and that included religious control over State politics leading the mob mentality.
Some early news papers called it time of fear because one had to be so carefully of what and to whom one spoke to or of.
This was what Mc Carty period was really about and caused among americans; Not communism per se, but was rather any and all who were not uber nationalist, and unquestioning I ne or group thinkers.

michael

September 29, 2017 at 8:16 am

Elements of the new “McCarthyite Movement” have targeted Russia to obtain a better foothold in the East in their quest to rule globally. They already have much of the West under their thumb. Russia is the lynch pin for them. To control Russia is to better control China’s rise. Together they are the resistance to the U.S. and its allies – so very much under the thumbs of these aspiring global rulers. Putin is standing in the doorway not allowing them in for now. But what of the future? They never give up their quest to rule.

Dieter Heymann

September 29, 2017 at 7:37 am

Blames everything on the Russians. Since when is Mr. Obama a Russian citizen?

Of course that nrocons hate Russia because their dream was US as the only superpower on the world making the poltics which AIPAC establish.I hope that slowly they will understand that were again wrong US is not the only superpower ,her influence through NGOs decreased,so not regime change eill be still possible and in this conditions the neocons are only poor clowns

Well, I finished watching the documentary, but was considerably disappointed by the second half. The cyber history is very interesting , as is the speculation on the actual bombing of of PanAm 103 and the manipulation of Gaddafi’s role. Trump’s buffoonery is adequately portrayed but The Deep State’s very significant foray into the new technology is conspicuously missing, along with Hillary’s role in rigging the primaries, while Putin’s constructive role in the MidEast is depicted as unduly sinister, which makes me believe(considering the Nov.2, 2016 release) the documentary is rather slick DNC propaganda(but still worth watching).

Robbi Gomes

September 28, 2017 at 11:37 am

This was an excellent article about the rise of New McCarthyism. You denounce propaganda throughout and then engage in your own propaganda by joining in with the democrats, liberals, and MSM and insulting about our president by calling him “a reality-TV clown.”

Mike Flores

September 28, 2017 at 8:40 am

While the over all thrust of this article I agree with, I wish the author had read the declassified story of Joe McCarthy in the CIA journal, STUDIES IN INTELLIGENCE which is online and can be found by searching THE POND CIA. We learn Joe had 2 lists of names, one the public was never told about he had provided Dulles in CIA with the names of Soviet spies within CIA. Everyone on that list was arrested, but after smearing Joe to protect the Democratic Party they couldn’t give Joe credit for busting a spy ring within the CIA. They gave credit to a former National Socialist instead. That info got my attention.

That would lead me to discovering Truman had protected the architects of the holocaust after World War 2. During the war he and FDR refused to bomb the tracks going to the death camps, though all other tracks were bombed. There were no German soldiers near the death camps and the gas chambers and walls could have been bombed, our soldiers could have parachuted in and liberated the camps. But the racist Democrats ( Truman had been a klansman, not a rumor – it is in his autobiography) did not want the camps liberated. Stalin, our ally at the time, even had a spy in Auschwitz within months after it opened who escaped with plans on how to liberate the camp. Stalin, like FDR and Truman, was an anti-semite who could care less. This is why our soldiers were not prepared for the camps when they stumbled upon them. It is also why the State Department turned in Pond member Raoul Wallenberg for saving Jews lives and had him killed. He disobeyed FDR and Truman’s orders by saving Jews. It is an odd thing that today liberals attack the KKK, but when the KKK picked who would run for office across the country as a Democrat “there couldn’t have been anything wrong with that”, or they claim the 2 parties switched sides so they claim FDR as one of their own until you bring up his anti-semitism and support of the holocaust. The good he did- he was a Democrat. His failures on ending the depression or turning away from the holocaust? Oh they claim, he was actually a Republican.

Rubbish.

This is the true face of liberalism.

My research into Joe began in 2006 when the CIA released the first information on having created a fake dossier to destroy Joe before the Army hearings. In the book AMERICA’S MOST HATED SENATOR you discover Joe never gave a number at his talk in Wheeling. The one reporter out of a room full of reporters who wrote he gave a number, would later confess under oath he wasn’t there. No other reporter reported a number. It was a monstrous lie. Joe always denied he gave a number. Segregationist and open anti-semite Tydings who headed hearings into Joe ( all of which Joe won) had held up a record claiming Joe was caught giving a number which The Washington Post, New York Times and other familiar pro- Democratic Party names reported. Oddly none asked to hear the record, they so wanted to believe. Tydings would later confess under oath there was only music on the record. He was trying to make Joe admit he gave a number.

The alliance between CIA and the Democratic Party began over McCarthy and hiding the 200 men who kept the holocaust running – many getting jobs,with CIA. I can only imagine the German people realizing the national socialists they thought were dead or in hiding returned to West German Intel with jobs, money and power. Interesting to note their first acts included selling back art seized from Germans who had stolen the art from Jews at a fraction of their value. They also covered up national socialist pasts, which would explain why when the Jews were slaughtered at the Olympics- Germany had no memorial for them and “the show went on”.

.The man who created all the lies about Joe was named Michael Straight. Look him up on Wikipedia. He was a Soviet spy recruited at Cambridge. He was also a speech writer for FDR.

But there is good news. The fake dossier against Trump didn’t work. Actually after THE DAILY BEAST published it ( and I read it and laughed out loud, like THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION it was an obvious fake. I’ve read thousands of declassified documents and could tell it was not written by anyone in Intel), I went on 4chan and discovered the kids who faked the dossier. They had been claiming for months they had passed it on and CIA and the FBI had fallen for their fake story ( the head of MI5 said the dossier was absurd and he would have fired any Intel officer who turned in such obvious garbage). Teens tricked them- or did they? Was it the excuse they needed to go after Trump and protect Hillary?

That is the real point here. Half the country no longer falls for the tricks that were used in the 1950’s. And they have failed to keep up with the times.

The real story isn’t even about Joe. It is about Grombach and The Pond. But don’t take my word for it. The CIA already confessed. Just search THE POND CIA.

Someday I hope Grombach and Joe are on stamps. Because since the fall of the Soviet Union we know those lists were correct.

But where did the lists come from?

A head of the KGB.

When you read about Joe if the the writer does not know The Pond, Grombach or that there were 2 lists, they are just repeating old Democratic Party propaganda.

Support of the holocaust. Support of segregation. Support of lynching. Isn’t it time to tell the American people the truth?

One year and nine months ago President Obama declared ISIS was finished. CIA, the Washington Post and NY Times all agreed. yet when the Russians came in they were shocked we hadn’t bombed key strategic areas. While we were being told ISIS was diminished videos were being released of children being beheaded and shot, and ISIS was rolling into city after city without anyone really trying to stop them. When asked President Obama said he didn’t want to bomb key ISIS strongholds because it would hurt the planet. i guess he can live with decapitated children.

Half the country no longer believes in this alliance’s propaganda anymore. Now it’s time to clear Joe’s name and tell the people the truth about the Democratic Party.

Donna Volatile

September 28, 2017 at 7:09 am

This is one of the best analysis I have read thus far. Excellent!

H.W. Phillips

September 28, 2017 at 12:10 am

Realist, Thank you for pointing out that Russia has been a historical entity for a long, long time. I saw the post suggesting 25 years and was flabbergasted. I personally think Putin bears more similarities to a Romanov tsar than a more contemporary Russian leader since he shows little ideological inclination other than intense nationalism. And not just any tsar, but a bad ass one like Peter the Great.

Putin separated the Oligarchy Business from the media. The Oligarchy lost control of the elections

Mild-ly Facetious

September 27, 2017 at 9:16 pm

Final question: What did McCarthy (and the Catholics) have to do with The Rat Line,
which funneled hundreds or thousands of Nazi Officials into high positions within the US Gov’t?

If racism was a Criminal Offense when committed against Europe’s Jews,
( according to Nuremberg )
why is it not an offense when committed against Minority Groups in America?

Or was McCarthy an Implant under Employ of the Vatican/CIA Ratline?
a deceptive ploy/MisDirection which is always their mode of operation.
Trump is the now McCarthy with the racist Sessions in his back pocket.

Mild-ly Facetious

September 27, 2017 at 8:48 pm

How would I expect a reply from any of you conformist’s to status quo?

A recreant populace will follow/adhere to an incompetent Leader and /or

Adhere to retrogressive declarations from the mouth of a Degenerate Clown?

but only for those who have not succumbed to what Scott Adams rightly calls mass hysteria.

Trump is not Hitler. He’s not even worse than Clinton if one considers the murder of hundreds of thousands of people by proxy jihadists a tic worse than clumsily noting that some illegal immigrants commit crimes including rape (this became ‘Trump said Mexicans are all rapists’ for those desperate to make Clinton’s loss due to the forces of Darkness rather than Clinton Fatigue).

The Jewishness of the neocons and much of the executives in the news media is something no one will talk about but it is a major (not sole) part of the power dynamic in our media and government driving both the Syrian myth-making and the anti-Russian hysteria.

The neocon movement, as opposed to warmongers/mitarists *in general* was and is Jewish-and-Zionist in its essence.

The warmongering it must be said may be easier for the Kagans and Wurmsers and Perles because they know that there are very… very few Jews in the US military who may be maimed or killed. The idea that their ethnonationalism is above scrutiny is prima facue absurd.

Martin Baron at the Post is Jewish and quietly Zionist. The head of the NED (for life apparently) and probable Israeli asset Gershman is Jewish and rabidly Zionist as is the head of the FDD.

Of course there are multiple actors and motives- nothing I have written or ever thought claims otherwise.

The claim is that if our analysis must forever avoid one of the few most major issues in terms of the loyalties and motives of a cohesive group of powerbrokers – then we must accept that we are more worried about red herring, predictable smears from warmongers and liars than we are about doing all we can to stifle the neocon plans for a century of war, Greater Israel, and the death of millions.

I know what my choice is. I would tell Abe Foxman that his disingenuous ‘offense’ is not worth the needless suffering of a single child – let alone the deaths of tens of thousands of them.

FreeOregon

September 27, 2017 at 6:51 pm

Blaming Canada is not good enough.

napier

September 27, 2017 at 6:40 pm

” In this case, supporting the far-right AfD is extraordinarily cynical, given how many millions of Russians died to defeat the Nazi fascists seven decades ago.”

The hypocrisy of these people knows no bounds. McCain and Nuland, and by extension, the U.S., were supporting actual neo-nazis in Ukraine! How many Americans died fighting them?

Yes it is fascinating Stephen,…it’s a pity that otherwise bright “progressives” like Robert Reich and Bernie Sanders seem to have been cooped by the Russia-gate hysteria.

Susan Sunflower

September 27, 2017 at 3:03 pm

yes, these trusted pundits, like Reich, need to either put up or shut up … Moyers and Company seem to have bought into Russia gate as well … but there’s not even the time worn “If you knew what I knew …” These accusations are treated as-if conclusively “given” / proven fact, with presumption of something beyond specific guilt of specific crimes, but a more vague deep character rot of “evil” or “treason” … when more simple everyday sins — pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth — seem more likely … at least until evidence to the contrary is shared. Seriously, when will possession by the devil make its appearance. I suspect if “collusion” is charged and/or proven it will be “old fashioned kind” relating to money laundering and/or tax evasion … the nation trembles, democracy is undermined … probably not.

They can probably string this out to cover Trump’s first term (hobbling him) and even likely prevent him running for reelection … The democrats remain an empty vessel and Pense is already out there stumping for midterm candidates .

“these trusted pundits, like Reich, need to either put up or shut up”…Susan,I think somehow it’s a fear of being viewed as an extremist or radical(along with the resultant blacklisting from the media)… a kind of throw-back to the fifties…the age of conformity.

Susan Sunflower

September 28, 2017 at 12:40 am

Aside from the frustration that they’ve been infected by the “body snatchers”, I have read Moyers and Reich and other with anticipation — because they have very real “street cred” — only to find nothing but the same allegations and assertions without any given foundation except, basically, “everybody knows” … I LIKE these people and am saddened that I no longer read with anticipation of seasoned insight… see also Krugman and several others … I’m not boycotting them, and I don’t HATE them, but I used to hold them in some esteem and that has faded. == They have allowed themselves to be used as partisan hacks or tools … Krugman most obviously.

Aye, Susan…I believe Krugman was looking for a cabinet position in Hillary’s anticipated administration.

Mily-ly facetious

September 27, 2017 at 12:40 pm

Special Report: As the New McCarthyism takes hold in America, the neocon Washington Post makes Russia the villain in virtually every bad thing that happens, with U.S. dissidents treated as “fellow-travelers,” writes Robert Parry.

{}

Is it new McCarthyism in America, or the Rebirth of White Supremacy, under Trump?

A look at the Racist History of our Newly Revered National Anthem will engender clues into the method to Trump’s latest madness.

Begin with a thorough biography of Francis Scott Key (Pro-Slavery) and the deleted last stanza of his poem.

Mix in the Battle of New Orleans which (Pro-Slavery) Andrew Jackson would’ve lost without the force of Blacks and Native Americans whose valor and courage abetted in the defeat of the stronger British forces.

Move forward to 1915 and President Woodrow Wilson who premiered D.W.Griffith’s movie Birth of a Nation to friends and associates IN THE WHITE HOUSE. Griffith’s film was praised and lauded to the hilt by the DC establishment.
In1916 Wilson declared, by Executive Order The “Star Spangled Banner” America’s national anthem – predominantly based on the wild popularity of Birth of a Nation.

Trump has managed to re-rally his bigoted base in a culture war, (after his “defeat” in Charlottesville). The now rebel yell is no longer the Confederate flag but the KNEELING under the Stars and Stripes by “disrespectful” predominantly BLACK American athletes.

The McCarthy Era was a crude, cruel and terrible time in these United States. A tyrant controlled Congress and wrecked the lives of many american citizens. —– But this Trump Era is an enlarging, enveloping, deleterious disaster.

And it’s only just begun… .

hatedbyu

September 27, 2017 at 2:21 pm

bigoted base.

you realize you are speaking of people you don’t know?

i believe that’s called prejudiced.

Mild-ly Facetious

September 27, 2017 at 6:51 pm

Which people is it that I don’t know, the ‘socialist Jews’ whom he Viciously Attacked, Slandered and Impoverished?

The Kibbutzim?? That collective agricultural settlement in modern Israel, owned and administered communally by its members and on which children are reared collectively/equally
but, were essentially forced into a collective life-style as/when they escaped from first Nazi death squads and then by Stalins’ CIA style assassins.

The controlling political party, along with the Financial Barons and the Military – ALWAYS CALL THE SHOTS.
Taking a knee is always, and at all times, A Signal of Submission!

The Kibbutzim struggled together and would not submit to the will of their pursuers. They led the way into Openness, and sharing, the idea of a Common Good.

In this sense, Trump is the clone of McCarthy. In his demonic zeal to MAGA and to erase Mr. Obama from the pages of American History, he has made himself A Wrecking Ball -a Civil War era style Wrecking Ball of Dissimulation.

There’s not surprise in this rise of the New McCarthyism in the US. It has always been there. We’re back to where imperialist US is all about, has been about and will always be about – war loving and war-mongering. US cannot survive without enemies, real or imagined and more imagined, If there are no enemies around, they have to be manufactured out of thin air, boom, there is an enemy!

William Blum has summed US Foreign Policy as driven by the following imperatives, namely:
(i) opening the world to American corporations or globalization, especially the military and the pharmaceuticals, wherever they may be or want to be for super-exploitation;
(ii) preventing the rise of any society that might serve as an alternative example to the capitalist model;
(iii) expanding the American imperialist empire and to have political, economi and military hegemony all over the world
(iv) to stop and prevent by any means possible the ascendancy of any regional power that could possible think of challenging the American hegemony –

Don’t we realise that Putin and his Russia like to protect his country’s sovereignty and economy!

Surely on the basis of the above imperatives, Russia and any would-be looking at Russia is a direct challenge to American hegemony and that is why the American population and the world is now fed the whole anti-Russia and anti-Putin’s hysterical diet!

Hank

September 27, 2017 at 10:38 am

If demonized Russia decided to cut the EU off and sell all its gas and oil to China, one wonders what the consequences might be, especially if the EU had to pay for expensive “fracked gas” shipped from the USA? As someone who lived through the so called cold war and practiced the “get under your desk drill” in the event of a nuclear strike (looks soo silly now) I know how much propaganda was involved. The failure of the US to convert to a Peace economy after WW2 has led to this vast industrial-military complex and as Gen. Wesley Clark exposed “if the only tool you have is a hammer, then everything starts looking like a nail” . However, we all know it is just a matter of following the money trail.

D.H. Fabian

September 27, 2017 at 10:36 am

What we’re dealing with what will probably be remembered as “Clintonism” — updated McCarthyism. Just as the Reagan right wing gained control over the corporate media, the Clinton right wing gained control over the media marketed to liberals, selling the right wing agenda to the beat of a rock and roll song. They jumped online in the 1990s, ensuring an open microphone for the Clinton faction. Perhaps their greatest coup was with developing their own TV network, MSNBC, reinforcing Clinton ideology daily.

It’s essential to remember that within days of the election, the Clinton camp jumped from “Trump stole the election” to “Russia stole the election,” and they’ve worked to build a tale to support their claim. The fact that every allegation to date has fallen under the weight of the facts, doesn’t bother them. Propaganda 101: Any lie that is repeated often enough, will come to be accepted as fact by the “masses.” The claim that “Russia stole the election” is recited daily in the media — just as the lies about Iraq’s “stockpiles of WMD” were recited.

Michael Kenny

September 27, 2017 at 10:27 am

Variations on a theme. The state we now call “Russia” has existed as a sovereigh state for only about 25 years. It is the largest single piece of wreckage remaining from the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is very definitely not a communist state. McCarthy’s enemy was communism and the Soviet Union as the international purveyor of that ideology, not Russia. Putin was nobody’s enemy until he invaded Ukraine and annexed part of its territory. He could very easily have just restored Yanukovych to power. At that point, he would have been hailed as a hero of European democracy. He chose not to restore Yanukovych and has paid the obvious and foreseeable price of that choice. As for AfD, a recent American book blames the refugee flood on the CIA, as part of a campaign to destroy the EU. Whether true or not, the thesis is certainly plausible. Indeed, Putin himself may well have been viewed at one point, as a CIA “asset” in that regard. AfD did so well at national level only because it got massive support in former East Germany (Wikipedia sets this out very well), where it has largely replaced the Linke as the regional protest party. Thus, its support seems to be much more related to a sense of reunification promises not fulfilled than the CIA’s refugee flood.

D5-5

September 27, 2017 at 11:32 am

Crimea engaged in a referendum to secede, the vote was something like 96%, Putin accepted the decision–which came from the Crimeans themselves, who also have a history of belonging to Russia traditionally. The Russians were already in Crimea with their military bases and naval port.

This commentator repeatedly offers this Putin “invading Ukraine and annexing part of its territory” BS on this site.

Susan Sunflower

September 27, 2017 at 11:45 am

I’d argue that historically what was claimed was the “menace of Communism” was just American protectionism … anyone-but-us was the enemy then, as it is now… the old “non-aligned” were demonized for refusing to sign onto the American plan …. same-old, same-old … the difference is the economic and development powerhouse that is China and the expanding number of countries not only willing to not join our team, but are willing to align with others.

How do you explain NATO expansion up to the Russian border? Containment of the non-communist Russian “bear” who we have been warning the world wants to reclaim its lost satellites (even as it does nothing beyond business as usual to support that notion) … See the much hyped recent Russian war games (on Russian territory) which are claimed to be “Russians Practicing for the Westward invasion of …” We keep casting Russia as THE aggressor and ourselves as THE protector. (oh and don’t forget the oft cited Georgia 2005 fracas).

I have heard Stephen Cohen say (last week on Bachelor) that he’s not sure the source of America’s fierce animus towards Russia. He suggested that two-fold — America needs an Enemy to define itself — and, second, that Russia failed to be utterly bowed, ruined, subservient … and that Putin is both the face and the engine of its rebirth.

My suspicion is and has been that it may indeed have begun as a cabal of would-be looters thwarted in “finishing the job” of destroying Russia by Putin’s rise to power and stopping of the hemorrhaging. That a veritable deep state of big international money formed a quite personal vendetta against Putin 25 years ago which has morphed and mutated, gained and lost “members” and interests.

Watching the the rise and seeming escape of Michael Khodorkovsky (who seemed to be this cabal’s “darling boy” and future leader of Russia) suggested this sort of “mafia-like vendetta” towards “the competition” Khodorkovsky, during the Russian dismantling, was our “good and reasonable Russian” … and it looked to me that he being groomed to be Putin’s replacement, perhaps even in a color revolution … now much water under that bridge, less likely, and now free (living in Switzerland, I think) and older (perhaps “sadly wiser”) unwilling to martyr himself for his powerful friends. It’s an interesting story. There’s a clearly pro-Khodorkovsky documentary on Netflix. Putin appears to have behaved shamelessly, ruthlessly and dishonestly in targeting Khodorkovsky for prosecution with resultant conviction and prison, but public opinion is that Khodorkovsky was a traitorous thief by acting as proxy for the monied, mostly American, cabal who would have destroyed Russia. (almost makes me wonder is Manafort is our designated martyred/fall-guy to be punished).

jaycee

September 27, 2017 at 2:58 pm

“it may indeed have begun as a cabal of would-be looters thwarted in “finishing the job” of destroying Russia”

It may be something like that, combined with old Cold War rivalry still swirling in the Id. To the former point, the NED’s Gershon’s comment of Russia being the big “prize” was made months before events in Ukraine (contrary to MK’s potted history).

To the latter, after Russia announced its intervention in Syria at the UN, an incensed Samantha Power stormed over to the Russian delegation and began spouting words to the effect “we won, you lost” – evidently meaning that America supposedly “won” the Cold War and the Russians, the “losers”, had no right to be assertive in the Empire’s domain. Juvenile? Yes.

Susan Sunflower

September 27, 2017 at 3:23 pm

wow … Powers … no words except she make Haley look better than she should.

Susan Sunflower

September 27, 2017 at 6:30 pm

here’s a profile of Khodorovsky from 2012 — Masha Gessen, vanity fair — apparently “putin” just (within the last months) tried and failed to stifle his “Open Russia” NGO … it’s a fascinating relationship going back decades (Khodorovsky was also one of Yelsin’s boys)

“The state we now call “Russia” has existed as a sovereigh state for only about 25 years. It is the largest single piece of wreckage remaining from the collapse of the Soviet Union.”

Russophobic much? Russia has been an autonomous civilisation for well over 1,000 years. Though borders change with political fortunes, Ukraine, or sections thereof, has been an integral part of Russia for most of that period. Ukraine is the newly-contrived state entity, mostly thanks to the political machinations of the founders of the Soviet Union who took parts of Poland, Austria-Hungary and Imperial Russia to patch it together, and it was never politically-independent until the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

If the boundaries had been redrawn then to accommodate ethnic identities and aspirations, the West could never have exploited them today. Crimea, the Donbass and even Odessa are all more properly part of Russia than Ukraine but Putin has not been pushing for that. In fact, he repeatedly has rejected the idea that any segment of “Ukraine” re-unite with Russia, except for Crimea for obvious strategic purposes.

This entire matter was precipitated by Washington, through the coup it instigated in Kiev, as an attack against Russia and its interests. Rather than offering any peaceful solution for the poor victims of the NATO-assisted aggression in the Donbass, Washington just keeps escalating the tensions and using Ukraine as an excuse to wage economic war against Russia no matter the collateral damage caused to its own vassal states in the EU.

Putin did not see it as his place to restore Yanukovych to power, in fact, the agreement negotiated with Russia, Poland, Washington and sundry European powers called for early elections and Yanukovych to voluntarily step down. But Washington couldn’t wait, it initiated the putch by unleashing snipers in the Maidan. It obviously wanted a violent rather than a peaceful resolution to the crisis. Every move by Putin thereafter supported local self-determination of the populations within Ukraine, a principle that Washington insisted upon throughout Yugoslavia (and now suddenly in Syria and Iraq). How is the Donbass different in principle from Kosovo or Bosnia? Or from Scotland, Quebec or Catalonia, for that matter? If Kiev can overthrow the legitimately-elected government, why is the Donbass, Odessa or Crimea not entitled to so the same? You are either consistent in your principles, or you actually have no principles. At the very least, Crimea and the Donbass were entitled to the referenda they carried out at the ballot box and the results should stand (pro or con), just as in every other cited example, save Catalonia.

They haven’t had the vote yet there, and, in fact, it may be prevented.

Dave P.

September 28, 2017 at 2:41 am

Realist – Excellent summation of the facts. And it is exactly opposite to what is fed to the U.S. public by MSM. Truth or facts simply do not matter any more, to the Ruling Elite, and to the MSM.

Michael McNulty

September 27, 2017 at 8:44 am

I think the intensity of this anti-Russia phobia is for two main reasons. First, to whip up the US population into a frenzy to ensure they’re ready for a war of annihilation similar to the Nazi v. Communist struggle of WWII, because second, the powers-that-be know if they start this war and lose they’re heading for war crimes trials, not here but in the east somewhere where their necks are on the line.

DC Reade

September 27, 2017 at 4:44 pm

I think that’s a dystopian fantasy. A nuclear war between the world’s two most well-armed nuclear powers would result in a terrible loss, even for the leaders of the victorious side. A net disadvantage. The risks of ruin aren’t acceptable. Imperial hubris is easy when it’s exercised against some marginal underdeveloped country, using someone else’s offspring. But nuclear war against Russia incorporates risks that put skin in the game for even the wealthiest and most powerful interests in the USA and the West, and that level of personal risk has a way of sobering people up. If nothing else, it’s guaranteed to be bad for business. Although the actual consequences would likely be far more serious, including some that would play out far into the future in ways that are impossible to predict, other than to say that they would almost certainly manifest as big problems with direct negative impacts all around, not sparing the leaders of the ostensibly victorious side.

Donald Trump may be the world’s most unstable leader of a nuclear-armed nation. He may even be reckless and uncomprehending enough to escalate his gratuitous and unnecessary provocations of North Korea, requiring them and their Chinese backers to be the adults in the room in order to cool things down and ward off catastrophe. But even Trump isn’t crazy enough to seek war with Russia. And whatever the shortcomings found within the ranks of the Hillarycrats and the neocons, they aren’t that crazy either.

Adrian Engler

September 27, 2017 at 7:47 am

I think it is remarkable how certain US media exploit fearmongering about an alleged Russian threat and Russian “meddling” in countries like France and Germany in a way that would sound ludicrous in these countries themselves. The Washington Post exploits the fact that most of its readers know very little about Europe.

Yes, it is true that before the French elections, there were some claims about “Russian hacking” from the Macron campaign. But while that was one of the main stories in the US reporting about the French elections, it was a marginal topic in France itself, and after the elections, the head of the French cybersecurity agency that investigated the allegations stated that there is no basis for attributing the hacking to Russia – it was so simple and unspecific that it could have been anyone, even a single person, according to that agency.

The basis for connecting the National Front with Russia had always been very slim. The party had once received a credit from a Russian-Czech bank, and many people have attempted to present this as a definitive proof. But it was a credit, not subsidies, and after that bank went bankrupt, the party had to look elsewhere – Marine Le Pen even had to ask her father whom she had thrown out of the party for money. If the credit by that bank had been proof for a Russian desire to support the French National Front, the Russian government could probably have found other ways to give it money, but that was not what was done.

In the case of the German AfD, there are not even such slim traces that could be used by those who want to argue that it is supported by Russia. There are some connections with Swiss right-wing circles – it is not clear whether anything illegal has happened, but there is some evidence about collaboration -, but no financial connection to Russia.

On the whole, attempts to pretend the rise of AfD is due to Russian support is so ludicrous that hardly anyone in Germany attempts to argue that way. There are several reasons for the increased percentage of votes for AfD. Originally, the Euro crisis led to the foundation of the AfD, which was not that far to the right at that time. Then, when from autumn 2015 to spring 2016 1-2 millions of refugees, mostly from Muslim countries, came to Germany, this led to significant political turmoil. Of course, one can argue that since spring 2016, the migration policies of Germany and the EU are actually quite restrictive, and that AfD exploits the situation from autumn 2015 to spring 2016 in a demagogic manner. But in any case, it would be absurd to expect that such large numbers of immigration in a short time have no political consequences. AfD also profits from general dissatisfaction, especially in the East of Germany (former GDR) where the economic situation is still worse than in the Western part of Germany. Polls show that a majority of AfD voters were mainly motivated by a dissatisfaction with other parties.

It is absurd to pretend that the increase in the percentage of votes of AfD is something strange and inexplicable and that there must have been some secret Russian meddling – and I don’t think many people in Germany seriously say something like that, it would just be too ridiculous.

Quite a lot of things depend on what is meant by “Russia linked”. I am Swiss, but I have studied Russian, and with some of the devices I use for connecting to the Internet, I use Russian language settings, so some would probably also count everything I do on the Internet with these devices as Russian-linked. In Germany, there are quite a lot of people of Russian origin (mostly ethnic Germans whose ancestors had lived in Russia for several generations, but who had been allowed to move to Germany. It is a myth that most of them support AfD – polls show that their voting preferences are not that different from other German citizens, but there are quite vocal supporters of AfD among the Russian-speaking community in Germany – there can be some sociological explanations, it hardly means that these Germans of Russian origin are “Russian agents” -, and AfD has made special campaigns for getting their support. In Russian media, AfD also has certain sympathies because they have questioned anti-Russian sanctions – there are also people from other parties who have done so, the sanctions hurt German business -, but there is a strong pressure on active politicians from mainstream parties not to say anything against the sanctions.

The narrative that conflicts – e.g. in connection with migration and race – are not existing problems that should be addressed by politics, but something that has been created by an evil outside enemy is rather odd, but it follows the typical pattern of conspiracy theories. It is perhaps striking how similar it is to people on the right who say that protesters are supported by Soros. Some people attempt to deny that there are real political problems and that there are people who are ready to go to protests and to write messages on social networks without being paid for that. Of course, the difference is that there is actual evidence that Soros finances protest groups in many country (though normal protesters are hardly paid, it is rather organizers who are supported), while there is hardly any evidence that the Russian state does so. The Soviet Union did support groups in Western countries that were not really close to the Soviet ideology, just for weakening the West (e.g. by supporting the IRA), but there is no concrete evidence that contemporary Russia does the same.

Susan Sunflower

September 27, 2017 at 8:51 am

The Clinton supporting Russia-hating media is trying seriously to morph Putin into a Nazi or Neo-Nazi via the formulation that Nationalism = Racism = Fascism etc. After all, as has been mentioned, Clinton compared Putin to Hitler. Putin is a nationalist. He is a social conservative. So are many people the world over — different nations, different cultures. This is applying American “political correctness” globally … how exceptional!.

Part of our insanity is that for the election cycle (more than 12 months) anyone who supported Trump (even a little bit as an alternative) was labeled as racist and eventually an alt-right neo-nazi … regardless of how unlikely and/or inappropriate the labeling.

Pro-Tip: People don’t vote for candidates who insult them

Suicidal for the democratic party but also bad for the nation as there is no room for discussion of issues or “shades of gray” … and —
as was obvious during the election cycle — many people are “protectionist” and having grown up being told that illegal immigrants steal American jobs from American workers — guess what?? — they believe same. There has to be room to talk about both what is fallacy and what is reasonable. Most people believe that their duty is to take care of their own family first …. (that these aren’t all-or-none zero-sum issues seems to have escaped notice).

D.H. Fabian

September 27, 2017 at 10:41 am

Well, Democrats knew they already self-destructed, even if many middle classers didn’t. To understand this, you need to know that the Dem voting base had long consisted of the “masses” — poor and middle class, for the common good. The Clinton wing split this base wide apart in the 1990s, and the past eight years confirmed that this split is permanent. This is why Democrats are probably over for the foreseeable future.

DC Reade

September 27, 2017 at 5:14 pm

The Clintons are Establishment proteges, apple-polishers who learned to play politics at the feet of their elders- at the cost of any ideals they might have started out with. As such, the Clintons didn’t “split the Democrats” in 1992- the more left-leaning Democrats had been a minority in the party from the beginning of their political careers. Their decision to triangulate to the right was made mostly out of pragmatism, to recapture Reagan Democrats. And even at that, Bill Clinton got into office with less than 50% of the vote, with a mere 43% of the vote. Ross Perot- a centimillionaire Texan social conservative/populist, got 19%! The message the Clinton’s got was that triangulation works. But triangulation had an expiration date as an effective tactic. It should have expired in January 1997. Because Bill Clinton was an extraordinarily adroit and charismatic politician, with decent executive skills. A more secure personality would have seen the opportunity and run with it. But Clinton didn’t do that, because he had gotten accustomed to the invisible leash that he had worn for his entire political career. At some point, both Hillary and Bill internalized the precepts of Atlantic Establishment Conventional Wisdom. At the cost of any core of political ideals that might have ever varied from the nostrums peddled by that elite, and also at the cost of their ability to reliably read and connect with ordinary American people. Which accounts for how they’ve been triangulating ever since, even as more and more Americans were holding more socially tolerant ideas and suffering from economic stagnation related to a “free market” snake oil wedded to globalization. One outcome of that was that Republicans and faux populist conservatives were able to hang the millstone of “globalizers” around their necks- even though that began much earlier, and achieved its actual escape velocity as a policy under George H. W. Bush. The Bush I administration was, after all, the real negotiator of the NAFTA treaty, and George Bush was the guy who signed it. All Clinton did was to push for sufficient Democratic votes in Congress to ratify it (a comfortable majority of Republicans already being in agreement.) GHW Bush was also the guy whose brother Prescott S. Bush helped found the US-China Chamber of Commerce, in 1993..

I’ll stop that lecture here, for now.

The Democrats are not “over” as a national political party- but it’s mostly because there’s practically no way to challenge or replace them, in the absence of ranked-choice voting.

LJ

September 28, 2017 at 6:38 pm

Nope. Wrong. Labour in England was written off just 6 months ago and Corbyn was irrelevant now all they need is an election and Corbyn is in power and the Left is making decisions for the future of England and Scotland and Wales, North Ireland too. . If Sanders had been allowed to compete on a level field he would have defeated Trump. Republicans in the House and Senate would be shamed in the Press and on TV in the eyes of youth , working people, people of color and just plain honest folks everywhere everyday . Don’t believe the hype or fall for the garbage. If We the People could then we would vote in our own self interest . That interest obviously does not lie with the Centrist Wing of the Democratic Party, The Far Right Populists will now take over the Republican Party, marginalize it and render it irrelevant going into the next Presidential election. The farthest Left candidate will win the Democratic nomination and become President. I am rarely wrong. I was right about Corbyn and people told me I was a stupid scumbag , haven’t heard back from them. The USA two party system is a tougher egg to crack but clearly our system is broken and the youth do not buy into the direction that we as a nation are presently headed> The Abyss.. Of course the down side is that given the corruption ($) that is endemic to our political system good things still might not be able to happen because the Democratic and Republican Parties will still be in control and the best indicator of future performance is??? That’s right past performance.

D5-5

September 27, 2017 at 11:18 am

“The narrative that conflicts – e.g. in connection with migration and race – are not existing problems that should be addressed by politics, but something that has been created by an evil outside enemy is rather odd, but it follows the typical pattern of conspiracy theories.”

Good comment. The “evil outside enemy” distortion is an easy fall-back and over-simplification the harried proles will either stomp their feet to or shrug off with “I wouldn’t doubt it.” But what we’re also seeing, and very hard to calculate fully, throughout the globe over the past few years, is a rising outrage and rejection of conventional politics–hence to these rogue movements whether in Germany or with Trump. People generally, globally, are fed up with as usual. So to desperate efforts to control this outrage and deflect it from zeroing in where it ought to be focused, as with current NFL controversy. Taking a knee is now in effect “commie.” Occupy seemed the seminal moment for getting the anti-establishment outrage underway, and it will continue, particularly if it can be commercialized.

Dave P.

September 27, 2017 at 6:14 pm

Adrian Engler – Thanks. Good post, very informative. It is essential to read comments from the outside to comprehend the whole picture.

Dave P.

September 28, 2017 at 1:55 pm

Adrian Engler – There is good article today in Sputnik News by Finnian Cunningham on Europe and Russia.

“….if fascism or totalitarianism ever comes to the United States….” (from the essay)

Wake up Robert parry, it is already here. Only, the Emperor now wears a new set of invisible clothes to deceive the masses. Read Sheldon Wolin about inverted fascism.

We always want to think we have time to fix things. We pretend, “it’s not here yet.” Wake up! We are already drowning in it……

mike k

September 27, 2017 at 7:11 am

People think fascism won’t be here until swastikas and stiff armed salutes are happening. Our rulers are far to clever now to support those archaic devices. The new improved fascism jettisoned those accouterments long ago…….

Tom Welsh

September 27, 2017 at 4:20 am

So Carl Gershman and other neocons publicly call for the removal of Mr Putin. Why? Because they accuse him of having tried to interfere with US politics.

Er…

Realist

September 27, 2017 at 1:39 am

Surely we now live in an artificial Matrix where information is continuously distorted, created from whole cloth and fed to the public by a cabal of media, government and corporate tycoons who think it is their prerogative to rule the world and to destroy anyone or any organization that gets in their way. Any attempts to glean objective reality and share it with the world by journalists, scholars, true statesmen or any honest citizens must be viciously opposed and contradicted by our would-be overlords and their amoral minions. What’s most troubling is that the brinksmanship these tyrants eagerly practice suggests they’d sooner see our world destroyed than lose absolute control of it. In the old days they used to say, “better dead than red.” Since any “reds” have long since disappeared, they’re just sticking with “dead” as the preferred state for everyone not in their club.

Their goals and strategy are risibly transparent and predictably catastrophic, but these powerful and selfish deceivers, with their limitless resources, have recruited the most influential people and effective technologies to mask the truth from most of the public. Unfortunately, even most of the highly intelligent and well educated segments of society have their price and will sell out their own blood for a ticket on that proverbial last plane out of Saigon. The remaining minority of folks who can discern the great ruse and have the fortitude to call the perpetrators out are branded “enemies of the people” and will serve as examples for how right thinking is rewarded and wrong thinking is corrected. Just watch as this country is led methodically, step-by-step into a nuclear confrontation with Russia accompanied not by protests but cheers, as precede most wars. How dare those Russians manipulate Americans, time and again, into acting against their own best interests!

Seer

September 27, 2017 at 4:18 am

“Just watch as this country is led methodically, step-by-step into a nuclear confrontation with Russia accompanied not by protests but cheers, as precede most wars.” Made me think of:

The greatest deceit that was perpetrated on mankind was the notion of perpetual growth on a finite planet. If we don’t understand that this is a bad premise then we would fall/believe anything (and TPTB recognize this; they perpetuate it in an almost mocking way).

“The greatest deceit that was perpetrated on mankind was the notion of perpetual growth on a finite planet.”…Seer, I note that you keep bringing this up, but it’s worth repeating…it’s part of the neoliberal endless bubble-blowing…and all bubbles burst. Note also that the growth hawks always emphasize privatization over a comprehensive planning process.

DC Reade

September 27, 2017 at 1:32 am

I happen to think that it’s likely that Putin and the Russian intelligence community are trying to weaken American society by seeding Internet information outlets with disinformation, doubt, and fear, in a cynical attempt to exacerbate various factors that already leading to a high noise quotient in our national political discourse.

Before I get any further into the lecture featuring my personal speculations on that topic, I’ll state the summary conclusion of my comment upfront: I think that any attempt by media conduits and search engines to deal with such a threat through inserting some sort of advance screening algorithm, servo mechanism, or unaccountable gatekeeping constitutes a cure that’s worse than the disease.

Back to the possible existence of a russian disinformation effort. I think it’s likely that there are several motives: the most obvious one is the practical weakening of the US as a global power and geopolitical rival.

Another is more abstract- the intent is experimental, to see how effective it might be to manipulate the American public will by stimulating various pressure points with subtle propaganda. This country presents an ideal test case for information warfare by an intentionally crafted and directed intelligence effort, in many respects: free expression is Constitutionally protected, the country is relatively monolingual; access to media is ubiquitous, including fairly easy access to self-producing it and promoting it; a historically high level of material and technological development makes the USA by far the most affluent nation with a population in excess of 250 million people; the country’s institutions have a long tradition of exalting ideals of political pluralism, election of national, state, and local leaders through ballot democracy, advice and consent of the governed, through elected representatives.

If a national society like that can be undermined, weakened, or manipulated toward desired ends by a foreign power without coercion or warfare, it demonstrates the fraudulence of democracy, the foolishness of entrusting the masses with self-government, and the socially destabilizing consequences of providing a citizenry with civil liberties that they’re too stupid to respect, except when they find them of personal benefit. . Cynical authoritarians view ordinary people as sitting ducks, and that democratic institutions and precepts of individual rights are just another hustle used to swindle them- and, indeed, some of those principles have been abused like that. Recurrently. But the ultimate hustle is to convince a citizenry to surrender them.

So I view the threat posed by disinformation and psychological warfare- from whatever source, be it foreing or domestic- as an imminent challenge, aimed at the American people. We need to respond by taking the democratic process seriously. By recognizing the value of what we have to work with, and the imperative of improving the system to live up to its espoused ideals. By taking a step away from the cliff edge of polarization and cultural Balkanization, and to not despise our common good fortune by indulging in petty partisanship and squabbling over trivialities. We need to remove any chips that might be on our shoulders toward other ordinary Americans, and concentrate on authentically serious problems that loom before us. We need to stop thinking reactively in terms of “the news cycle” and being spoonfed or sent up on what to be concerned about on a daily basis, and obtain the necessary erudition to have a basic acquaintance with vital academic fields and scholarly disciplines like history, geography, natural resources and energy, technological advance, pollution and environmental risk. We need to construct forums on the Internet where differing viewpoints and even opposing positions positions can actively debate ideas without the noise of stupidity. We need to activate the inherent power of the Internet to expose falsity, and empower ourselves and our fellow citizens with facts and logic. Independently, as reflective, intelligent members of the reality-based community. With autonomous agency, not towing some party line.

Critical thinking and a mastery of informal logic and the detection of logical fallacies is vital. More Americans need to get a lot better at that, fast. Too many of us have our buttons pressed, too easily. A lot of self-discipline is required to become a competent fact-checker. Don’t believe the hype- the Internet is not a hindrance to that task. It’s an unprecedented advance, and we need to keep it that way.

What we don’t need is to have the problem of disinformation, logically fallacious claims, and propaganda countered with the techniques of a secret spy project, deploying sophisticated censorship techniques disguised as helpful objective arbiters of Facts and Truth. If that happens, the other side wins. The more power such a project assumes, the more the other side wins.

Realist

September 27, 2017 at 2:32 am

You are starting with the false assumptions that every public remark emanating from Russia i) originates from its government and ii) represents “disinformation.” Russia has many privately-owned media sources, of which many are foreign owned. Even Russian state media, such as RT, employs many well-known American journalists like Larry King, Ed Schultz and Tom Hartmann who run their own talk/news shows, are responsible for all content and are not anti-American in any sense of the word. The Russian government, people and business interests certainly have their own best interests which do not always coincide with what is most advantageous to the powers-that-be within the United States. They honestly represent those interests. You seem to presume that anything they might say short of American boiler plate propaganda is “disinformation.” If you would make the effort to actually read the content in Russian news outlets on the internet (let’s choose RT, Sputnik and Russia Insider) you would see that probably 95% of the facts conveyed are absolutely identical to the facts reported in the Western media. They actually praise America when it does something creative or lauditory in most any area of human endeavor.

Of course, they will criticise America in opinion pieces when it practices its all-too-common high-handed warmongering and gratuitous accusations of imaginary wrongdoing. Is it a surprise to you that Russia dislikes (and will express this dislike) when surrounded by American military bases up to its borders, when the governments of its age-old neighbors are overthrown by American-sponsored coups to be replaced by regimes outrageously antagonistic to Moscow, when America subsidizes, arms and trains these antagonistic regimes they prop up, when it has NATO missile batteries only a few hundred miles away (mere minutes in fly time) pointed at its largest cities, when NATO ships and planes are constantly on patrol at Russia’s borders with transponders off, and when extensive economic sanctions are imposed against Russian citizens and corporations for infractions that Russia vehemently denies and for which not a shred of evidence exists or is ever proffered. All the objective information such as exists, in fact, suggests that Washington makes these charges up from whole cloth without a scintilla of actual evidence. Just to give one example, all the hard evidence relating to “Russia Gate” suggests that the DNC emails were leaked by a Washington insider directly to Wikileaks, not by Russia. Do some reading on the subject at this web site if you really seek truth on the matter. Russia is also understandably critical of Washington foreign policy because it seems that the folks in Washington are congenitally unable to ever keep their word. Whenever a cease-fire or safe zone would be agreed upon inside Syria, the American military would immediately violate the agreements and sucker punch the Syrian army or its Russian advisors with surprise attacks. It seems to the objective observer that Russia is mostly being honest and that Washington is the major purveyor of “disinformation,” both to the world and to the other side.

Dave P.

September 27, 2017 at 3:31 am

Realist – Excellent summation of the facts..

Binky

September 27, 2017 at 4:44 pm

I disagree. It looks like another non-fact based quasi religious narrative preference with flimsy supporting evidence. Knowing that the prosecution cannot release what it has gathered until the legal process continues it is another example of fanciful narratives being able to fly at light speed around the world before testable fact and evidence held to standards can get their respective britches (or bruki) on.

It does show what some people would like to believe and often for what reasons.

Realist

September 27, 2017 at 6:05 pm

And your beliefs are based on what? You got nothing. That’s why the entire legal system is based on the requirement that evidence be produced before guilt is established and punishment is meted out. You would prefer some totalitarian system, some 21st century reign of terror, in which mere accusations are enough to destroy those whom you oppose.

anon

September 27, 2017 at 9:13 pm

Sure, over year and not a shred of evidence. Just waiting, aren’t they?

Agree, Realist did a great job of deconstructing DC Reade’s faulty premise!

DC Reade

September 27, 2017 at 4:11 pm

“You are starting with the false assumptions that every public remark emanating from Russia i) originates from its government and ii) represents “disinformation.”

No, I’m not. I don’t think that’s the case. I didn’t imply that it was.

” You seem to presume that anything they [Russian sources] might say short of American boiler plate propaganda is “disinformation.”

No, I don’t.

Realist

September 27, 2017 at 6:11 pm

Yes, you do.

Your very own words in your introduction: “I happen to think that it’s likely that Putin and the Russian intelligence community are trying to weaken American society by seeding Internet information outlets with disinformation, doubt, and fear, in a cynical attempt to exacerbate various factors that already leading to a high noise quotient in our national political discourse.”

Words have meaning… and consequences. You can deny you said these words, but there they stand, as the premise for your entire essay.

DC Reade

September 28, 2017 at 12:48 am

From my 09/27/2017 12:45pm post, about three posts down the thread from here:

“I intended to bring up the existence of a Russian-directed propaganda effort as a likelihood, not a proven certainty. (An ability to edit would have made this more clear- I’m seldom satisfied with my first first published drafts.)”

My bad. Although as I also said below, I think it is likely that Putin propagandists were working this past election. I think the Russians been attempting to influence US public opinion for some time. Although that’s only a minor second-order problem, compared to the larger phenomenon of people riding their hobbyhorses and peddling ideological orthodoxy and unexamined mythology of various sorts in Internet discussions. I’m trying to figure out what the hell is actually going on. I have no use for someone trying to feed me their line.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere in recent comments, I think that the American Beltway establishment meddles and interferes in the politics of foreign nations. I think the notable thing is the way that Americans do it in the post-Cold War era. They don’t seem to have made any effort to hide their presence. They’ve been known to practically announce it with trumpet blasts, on occasion. I think this is out of the misguided belief that the locals they’re seeking to reach have all been pining to be gathered into the Western orbit of free-market neoliberal Constitutional democracy. So when they swing their weight behind candidates, they’re pretty much making the implicit argument that they’ll be signing on with the enlightened progressive West. Like “Vote for Boris Yeltsin- he’s in our corner!” Notwithstanding the reality that they preferred Yeltsin because he was a pliable drunk. Or whoever in Ukraine, notwithstanding their corruption, because of straight-up geopolitical hubris. As if the US government would put up with a Mexican regime that began spurning us in favor of China. As if traditional principles of national self-interest and regional geopolitical influence no longer apply in the case of post-1991 Russia, because of Power. Because it’s weaker than the old USSR. (But it isn’t that weak.)

So my problem with American interference in the internal politics of foreign nations is the fact that we’re doing it. The fact that they’re being candid about it is probably due to blithe arrogance and hubris. Nonetheless, the openness of the effort is a saving grace. When it backfires, it’s embarrassing, but it isn’t sordid.

My problem with the possible Russian attempts to influence internal American politics- if they’re doing it, which I think is logically probable, as a personal opinion based on deduction- is more about HOW they might be doing it. Covertly, clandestinely, deniably, and deviously. Maximizing disinformation, hyperbole, and a one-sided narrative that subtly portrays the Kremlin mode of government favorably in comparison to the American system. A narrative that pushes the line that American democracy is a corrupt farce, and has never been anything other than that, with no redeeming value. The KGB-CPUSA line, circa the height of the Cold War era. A line that I don’t happen to buy into. And I sense its presence by how it falls on my ears. As with a number of other bogus narrative templates that have signatures of their own.

Hey, just my opinion. Just saying.

Realist

September 28, 2017 at 5:01 am

That’s a plausible explanation and a well-reasoned response I cannot argue with. This is my take on the putative “info wars” between Washington and Moscow.

Every country, just like every person, has their own point of view and perhaps a different perception of the facts. I have no problem with that or with anyone’s expressing reality as they perceive it. I may not agree with their facts or interpretation, but my knee-jerk response is not to consider it disinformation in the absence of evidence, it may be just a difference of opinion. If I discern a deliberate false narrative, I have the right to dissent and provide counter evidence. Everybody does under the rules of debate that nearly all countries claim to embrace.

I also have no problem with any person or country trying to influence others by disseminating their beliefs or perceptions. As far as I am concerned, it is free speech. The Russian government, just like the American government, freely states its case to the world over whatever media it has access to. One side inevitably characterises the other’s as “propaganda” when there is not agreement. That word itself is usually just propaganda. It is every citizen’s duty, whether he plans to vote or not, to figure out the truth of every experience he encounters in life to the best of his own ability. I don’t want or need someone else telling me what I can hear, or read, or believe. I especially don’t want my government telling me that I cannot listen to political arguments, whether the origin is foreign or domestic. As a matter of fact, I choose to go out of my way to gather facts about world issues from as many sources as possible, especially from foreign sources where the perceptions or their interpretations may vary from our own. I deliberately do this because, over the years, I’ve come to realise how often American sources are flat out wrong, which can be for many different reasons both honest or deceitful.

I know full well that America has been quite famous for spreading its version of “the truth” to the world on every media, for the obvious purposes of winning friends and influencing people. Every idea first has to be sold before it is bought by anyone, and America has unprecedented resources for doing so–both internally and externally. Russia has been trying to play serious catch-up and emulate Washington in this arena by establishing a relatively modest international media, basically RT and Sputnik News which have miniscule coverage in comparison to the American networks plus the BBC. Why Washington thinks it has to further impede a competitor that barely holds a candle to its reach, ratings and assumed credibility is just paranoid behavior. It tells me that Washington is afraid of ideas or of how its reportage will stack up against other sources. If Washington stands only for truth and believes in the primacy of its messaging, it would welcome foreign commentary on its policies and politics.

Why should any critique from abroad be considered “interference” and toxic to our democracy? It’s not like any other country has ever attempted to forcibly impose “regime change” on the United States, but it is helpful to know how our policies will be received by other nations. However, the relationship is never symmetrical when it comes to American influences on the rest of the world where we give ourselves carte blanche. I thought it was unfortunate that Al Jazeera, the Arab news outlet based in Qatar, was driven out of business–essentially by the Saudis if I recall correctly. It basically reported the same news as did the West and RT, but from an Arab perspective, and it did so without bashing Israel.

Dave P.

September 27, 2017 at 2:48 am

DC Reade – You have discussed quite a few topics in your comments, and some are good and well intentioned.

But your comments:

“I happen to think that it’s likely that Putin and the Russian intelligence community are trying to weaken American society by seeding Internet information outlets with disinformation, doubt, and fear, in a cynical attempt to exacerbate various factors that already leading to a high noise quotient in our national political discourse.”
“Back to the possible existence of a Russian disinformation effort. I think it’s likely that there are several motives: the most obvious one is the practical weakening of the US as a global power and geopolitical rival.”

Can you provide some evidence about this Russian disinformation campaign you are referring to. What U.S. and The West have been doing for the last seventy years, the disinformation campaign in the entire World, one can write books to fill a small library. Over the last fifty five years, I have read most of the Russian Literature , and it’s history – including most of Solzhenitsyn’s books. I only came to know about RT and Sputnik News not too long ago. I find that many times, the news does take into account Russia’s side – it’s view point, and some bias. But it is based upon facts, and one can draw some intelligent conclusions from it – ignoring the Russia’s view point or bias. There is nothing there in those two Russian information sites to mislead the American public or destroy American democracy – if it really exists.

And in cyber warfare, Russia simply does not have the resources to match U.S. and The West. We are number one in cyber warfare.

For the last two decades our entire media – TV and Newspapers in U.S. have simply become propaganda outlets, nothing less. It is not Russia, it is our own Ruling Establishment, who are destroying our democracy.

Even USSR was far behind technologically than the West. They had only military power, and that was far inferior to The West’s. After the collapse of USSR, the shrunken Russia underwent complete collapse – and the looting of it’s resources with West’s support. Russia with 145 million people is no threat to any one. To any intelligent person, it should be clear that all Russia’s actions are in self defense – to protect it’s sovereignty, and it’s resources. There is no match between U.S. and Russia – U.S. and the West are simply too powerful.

Russia is far from fully recovered from the devastation it went through during the 1990’s. To any thinking person, it is clear that Russia is trying desperately to fix it’s economic house for it’s people betterment. And it is developing it’s defenses enough to keep the Robbers away who are sitting at it’s Western borders with guns. It has to protect it’s house. You know more than half the Americans have guns in their homes to protect their homes. Does not Russia has the right to protect it’s home?

Realist

September 27, 2017 at 8:25 am

Spot on analogy describing Russia’s dilemma with the U.S., and an objective comparison of the two nations.

DC Reade

September 27, 2017 at 12:45 pm

I intended to bring up the existence of a Russian-directed propaganda effort as a likelihood, not a proven certainty. (An ability to edit would have made this more clear- I’m seldom satisfied with my first first published drafts.) I happen to think it is likely. But that’s mostly a subjective impression, from someone with long experience reading Internet stories and article comments over a span of many years, from a wide array of sources. I’m as interested in learning of documented and specific evidence of it as the rest of the readers here.

As for your observations about Russia and the fate it’s suffered in the post-Cold War era, I agree with most of that. I think the US government pressed its advantage in foolish ways, including the sort of meddling interference that I worry about from the Putin government.

But that history also works to support my position, in some sense. In the Internet era, propaganda and information wars can be carried out on a relatively low budget by national regimes, as long as the skill sets- mostly related to language facility and cultural familiarity-exist to produce and disseminate that agitprop and disinformation. People who deny the possibility that Putin’s government is doing this- well, why wouldn’t they? Innate ethical constraints? I don’t think the Russians hold themselves to a higher standard of purity than the Washington Beltway intelligence apparatus. And they’re skilled at it- probably better than our often ham-fisted players, in the usual case.

Again, my main point: the last thing the US needs is some targeted counterintelligence response involving screening and censorship of the Internet. Be that direct censorship or “soft” censorship, like burying search results.

Dave P.

September 27, 2017 at 4:42 pm

DC Reade – You made some very good points above. However your comment: ” . . . including the sort of meddling interference that I worry about from the Putin government.”

This is where I would like to add that this is a deeply embedded Russian Fear driven deep into the American Psyche as a result of propaganda which has been going on for a hundred years now against Russia.

I was not born here. I came to U.S. fifty two years ago. I grew up with all these Western magazines, and newspapers in big city libraries, and college libraries – Time, Life, British Economist, Manchester Guardian, The Statesman . . . . And none from USSR/ Russia. All our high school and college curriculum was still the same as during the British days.

But India was a friend of both U.S. and USSR. The local newspapers were balanced in their presentation. All we learnt about Russia was reading Russian Literature, and articles in local newspapers, and from our political scene. Like in Russia now, Communist Party during the 1950’s was the second biggest after the Ruling Congress Party in the country. And we grew up hearing all kind of different political ideas.

As it was clear to everyone beyond The West, a ruined Russia tried desperately during the 1991-2005 period to befriend and have good relations with the West. But the West had different thoughts and designs on Russia.

Our leaders Obama, Hillary Clinton, McCain, and others had been bad mouthing Putin and Russia in an almost infantile way. But Russian Leadership had never hit back with any foul language or any other way. It has shown to the World that Russian leadership is of finer class, not the bullies like the ones we have in Washington. The leadership of the Country reflects the people of the Country as well.

I hope we can see the light and stop misleading the American Public, and stop messing up their minds with all this Garbage about Russia on TV, in the newspapers, and from the mouths of The American Ruling Elite.

We really need political reeducation of the people in this country. U.S. has lot of potential. It can do lot of good in the World instead of inflicting death and destruction on the helpless people on the Earth.

Realist

September 27, 2017 at 6:17 pm

Those are ridiculous weasel words… to say that you are not accusing the Russians of disinformation but just claiming that it’s LIKELY they are. The rest of your diatribe is then based on that assumption.

Binky

September 27, 2017 at 4:55 pm

numerous fallacies and unsupported assertions that detract from your position.
-Russian firms supply Kaspersky antivirus software to the DOD, for instance-is that a lack of capacity? Russia has always had pride in its mathematics, chess, and philosophy pursuits and those are the bases of modern computing.
-News media has always been propaganda, full stop, since the beginning of media. Every printed word has unspoken intentions behind it. Remember the Maine? I’ll provide the headlines if you provide the war.
-Russia with 145 million people, advanced digital and manufacturing capability, access to private Western capital with no national loyalty nor commitment to constitutional democracy and often the opposite is most definitely a force to be reckoned with.
-Does any nation have the right to defend itself on others’ soil or networks or infrastructure? This is a reflexive question as well, as a nation with 186 foreign bases and the largest military force in the world.

It looks to me like Putin saw an intel opportunity like hundreds of others, took it, and won the lottery with Trump. Instead of ideologies of capital and the social sphere, it was one mobster to another through third parties; and other mobsters don’t like being left out. Putin’s support of extreme right wing ethno-nationalism and its echoes in Europe and the US is releasing a powerful storm of resentment, ignorance and destruction with no clear end game in sight.

Susan Sunflower

September 27, 2017 at 6:02 pm

I suspect autonomous hacker collectives sought reward (by finding “good stuff”), found “good stuff” and were likely rewarded … with the amount of industrial espionage and massive financial hacking and attempted hacking (sometimes just to delineate a target’s strengths and vulnerabilities), I think this may have been “Sunday Comics” in either serious intent or outcome …

The DNC e-mails were largely a dud … the Sanders contingent were outraged but they did not appreciably bolt (resign, leave the party) much less sabotage Clinton or work for Trump … didn’t happen, even if some individuals chose third party candidates or voted for Trump to express their outrage.

Again, fwiw, if Wikileak’s files were indeed an insider “leak” — not a hack — that does not rule out hack(s) or attempted hacks by Russia or a dozen other interested parties.

bonus irony is that America used to have a robust hacking community that it has so demonized and criminalized that we are likely weaker than most of our “competitors” having created a genuine legal danger to even admitting to being a hacker and facing utter ostracism and distrust for cooperating with the USG.

Note that demonization of transparency and hackers began in earnest by the “liberal” Democrats in response to Manning/WikiLeaks war files … transparency might hurt the brand …
Salon has been shameless

These are all smear and regime change propaganda weapons and tactics. U.S., along with European Vassal States, have been doing it for a long time ; Mossadegh, Lumumba, Allende, Saddam, Gadaffi . . . There is a long list of these leaders, many of them murdered.

Since his 2007 speech at Munich Security Conference, they have been after Putin – Russia has been, and still is the target for a regime change – as it was done with Ukraine Coup in 2014.

Realist

September 27, 2017 at 6:22 pm

The world is still waiting for your ilk to produce ANY evidence that either Trump or Putin are “mobsters” as you claim. Talk is cheap, making accusations is easy, providing evidence had better be essential in a civilised world. Or, maybe you assume they are mobsters because you know the people you support surely are? That’s it, isn’t it.

I read the original Spy artiles in the 1980’s and New York Magazine in the 90’s … how/why the republicans ever allowed Trump to get the nomination still confounds me …

Johnston said in 2017 that in 2016 he couldn’t find a publisher because everyone though Trump would soon be gone — of course, while Maddow et al. worried about his unreleased tax returns.

Realist

September 27, 2017 at 7:40 pm

Susan, the media, the pols and the moneyed interests behind the scenes wanted Trump to get the nomination because he would be the easiest opponent for Hillary to beat, at least so the thinking went. In fact, according to many polls, he was the only opponent she might be able to defeat. Certainly, Bernie would have thrashed him.

I suspect that Trump engages in deal-making by the same set of rules that most American tycoons do. Remember all of Romney’s dirty dealings that basically just gutted American businesses and financially raped the employees? Remember the origins of the Bush family fortune and the Carlyle Group, partnership in which serves as a reward for the most loyal international politicians? (Barack should be up for at least associate status soon.) The foundations of the world economy are mostly a private club of Anglo-Zionist oligarchs. Trump might be the exceptional outsider, though he certainly wants in. Expose and destroy Trump and everyone becomes a target, especially if he starts talking. They don’t want that.

Susan Sunflower

September 27, 2017 at 7:55 pm

The idea that Russia somehow bet of dark-horse Trump to win is absurd … however, the question of “how trump was even allowed close to the seat of power” IMHO does deserve (a completely separate, non-criminal) investigation — y’know by “reporters” …

I was aghast and then baffled (as I said) that anyone would consider him “respectable” enough — with his wives, and draft-dodger status and mob ties (agree — hardly unique in New York high $$$ circles), and bankrupcies and failure to honor contracts law suites.

This has nothing to do with Clinton or Russia or WikiLeaks — how this man was allowed past the “bouncers” is a mystery deserving an answer.

(FWIW, we could not possibly have the ongoingo and escalating drug problem we have today without a massive distribution network … yes, the DEA is as strategically “bad” at their “mission” as the CIA is at theirs … I do not take the “underworld” lightly and remember when the old-fashioned original recipe mafia was largely replaced (in the press and the public imagination) by the “Russian Mafia” …

I was very alarmed that Sessions and Trump were about to launch some “take a bite out of crime” targeting the Mexican and Black gang distributors ….(competition, doncha know) under some RICO prosecution, further militarizing the police in the name of “national security” … stay tuned, it may still happen.

Dave P.

September 28, 2017 at 2:15 am

Realist – Your comments on wanting Trump as the candidate by the moneyed interests, and deal-making tycoons, and the Anglo- Zionist oligarchs are right on the mark.

Dave P.

September 28, 2017 at 2:29 pm

Realist-

Your comments: “The world is still waiting for your ilk to produce ANY evidence that either Trump or Putin are “mobsters” “.

The World is looking at the wrong place. The real mobsters reside in Washington and in New York, and Tel Aviv too. That is where they should start compiling their list of Mobsters in the World.

As long as democrats refuse to hold themselves accountable for burying any and all progressive candidates, I.e., Kucinich, Sanders and Stein, and only promulgate Bilderberger-approved puppets, then Trump could actually win again. Russia irks the Cabal as does Venezuela because they want to in couple their oil from the Petro dollar. Hillary vowed to enforce a no fly zone over Syria, too bad most Americans don’t know Russia has a naval base in Syria and Israel has ongoing fracking with Genie Energy in the Golan Heights and Rupert Murdoch, Lord Rothschild, and Dickk Cheney are investors. It’s Rothschild’s world, were only working in it.

Hide Behind

September 27, 2017 at 12:19 am

Mc Cartyism is not new for it never went away in first place, its’ visibility disapeRed from public view to reside hidden within FBI, MILITARY, Congressional halls of Defence committees and subs as eell as every branch of government.
EVEN into our administrators of higher learning and of course our domestic ISIzl and Taliban the CIA and military contractors.
It stems from a mental attitude that in actuality is not far Different that of old Soviet and China’s security that were all patterned after the successes of Gestapo in Pre and WWII Germany.
In 60″s we still had loyalty oaths upon demand, and military had list of over 100 political organizations you had to look through and put no beside. Or else be relegated to grunt only and low rank or not allowed to join.
Fear extended to all government offices and down to GRADE school teachers.
The worst nd lowest sort of people who participated in the persecution and purges of “undesirables” were WWII and members of the so called “GREAT GENERATION” WHO WERE RABID NATIONALIST AND KILL ALL THEM F’N COMMIES.
Enough for now as most responders were mot even a gleam in daddys.eyes yet? Look up CO Intel Pro and House investigation of Unamerican Activities for real-life still today personages and renamed groups.
HE’LL IN SOUTH YOU GOT NOW 3RD AND PIMPLE FACED. 4TH GENERATOON LOOKING FOR COMMIES.

Hide Behind

September 27, 2017 at 12:29 am

WEIRD HUH,responding to own comment, but please excuse cuz I am old and yes sometimes I talk to myself, but as of yet my hearing is great and I never heard me answer my own questions, so no one andwers.
I forgot the most fanaticalsupporters of Mc Carthy, every FN established religion and at top of them was the Holy Rollers and Hellfire and Damnation southern Baptist.

Seer

September 27, 2017 at 2:31 am

Gott mit uns?

For the most part, governments and churches are the same. The only differences are the words they speak: actions end up the same; that is, the desired actions- authoritarianism.

Realist

September 28, 2017 at 9:57 pm

In God we trust. All others pay cash.

RnM

September 27, 2017 at 5:46 pm

A woman who counseled young men on how to defeat the military draft in 1970 told me about someone who claimed to believe in reincarnation, therefore he couldn’t sign a document to swear that he had not, in a former incarnation, belonged to one of those organizations on the list.
I was prime meat at the time, having dropped out of university, losing my deferment, and somewhat desperate. I tried the ploy, and earned an audience with the shrink. He was impressed, apparently never having heard that one before, but he sent me back to the room where the usual degrading physical examinations were still ongoing. The rest is history, sort of.

turk 151

September 27, 2017 at 12:03 am

The New McCarthyites stare at you blankly as you try to ever so gently explain to them that Obama and Clinton are both war criminals. And that the Sunni Muslims of the prior generation would have nothing.to do.with these Salafist / Wahabbi freaks that were empowered by Obama and Clinton.

What’s occurring within the Outlaw US Empire isn’t really surprising for those knowing about Deep State workings. The following link is to an exceptional article published in January of this year that generously informs one about a great many things regarding that immoral institution; perhaps Mr Parry will comment about it and/or its author at some point. Its introduction:

“Douglas Valentine latest study of the CIA shows him to be “an excellent history teacher” – which is high praise from the reviewer, an excellent teacher, himself. The CIA is a banditry on a huge scale, ‘invented not simply as an advisory and coordinating instrument for spying but as a criminal organization to cover for the fundamental criminal activity of US corporations and those who own them.'” https://www.blackagendareport.com/cia_real_organized_crime

Much has occurred since General Smedley Butler wrote War is a racket, yet much remains the same, as in the goals Butler was tasked to attain. The key action needed to have any hope in reversing the situation and realize the ability to self-govern is educating the Proles as to the why of their condition, as Occupy Wall Street attempted–admittedly a very difficult task given the opposing forces. RussiaGate may finally be fizzling out, but our 1984 and Animal House world will still remain.

Adam Izad

September 26, 2017 at 10:14 pm

Dear Mr. Parry: Considering your knowledge and views, I regularly read your articles and enjoy them. Having first hand knowledge of the post election protests against the fraudulent outcome of the polls in 2009 election in Iran, I am certain that it was a grass roots opposition. Unfortunately due to the view that the government and the leader of that country present (which is not genuine) towards US imperialism, some analysts consider them as their allies on the left of the political issues. I hope you do not have this misunderstanding, as the government of Iran has helped US military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, and recent documents show that Khomeini was indeed in collaboration with the CIA from day one.

It seems the Russia-gate controversy is winding down to a non-event as Robert Parry predicted; something of a tempest in a samovar. However. the McCarthyite aspect is likely to be with us for a long time and I can only hope it won’t result in more media censorship, as the blacklisting in the msm is almost tantamount to that already.

Dave P.

September 27, 2017 at 2:25 pm

BobH – Russia-Gate nonsense may be getting too stale now, and the public is turning off . And the Ruling Elite are on to something new – Russia defacing this very beautiful democracy in U.S. we have here, through Facebook ads and other cyber warfare.

Remember Edward Bernays during the 1920’s. They have been masters in, how to manipulate the minds of the gullible public, for a long time – one hundred years experience in doing that. Movie industry – which is largely in their hands – serves that purpose too. What all these Think Tanks are for? Dominated by the Zio-Neocons, these are places, where all these schemes are cooked, the schemes to implement “The Full Spectrum Dominance Agenda”. – no matter what the costs and consequences are.

The whole agenda of the The Ruling Elite is to protect the interests of top 1%, and may be helping the life style of another 10%. It is not about protecting America or helping the American people.

Another very good and timely article by Robert Parry. From the article:

“None of this is even secret. Carl Gershman, the neocon president of the U.S.-government-funded National Endowment for Democracy, publicly proclaimed the goal of ousting Putin in an op-ed in The Washington Post, writing: “The United States has the power to contain and defeat this danger. The issue is whether we can summon the will to do so.” ”

Neocon Carl Gershman has been the head of this organization for over three decades now. NED, this govt- funded organization, whose sole purpose is to destabilize the governments beyond The West and regime changes. And in his Op-Ed article in Washington Post, last October Carl Gershman openly called for the removal of Putin, whom Russians elected with more than 65% of majority vote. Russia is the biggest country in the World and is heavily nuclear armed. It is almost a declaration of war against Russia.

Was there any voice against it or criticism of this Carl Gershman’s Declaration to oust Putin , in Political Washington? No, the Democrats, during the Presidential campaign, doubled up on it. If we reflect seriously about what is going on in the Country’s Ruling Establishment, there should be alarm bells ringing in the Country’s Intellectual/Academic Institutions by now. These institutions should be the bulwark against Totalitarianism taking hold in this country. There is not even a whisper coming out of these Institutions.

Does any body know where the Country is heading to?

Joe Tedesky

September 26, 2017 at 10:58 pm

Who ever is behind this campaign to demonize Russia must have a lot of juice to be able to be so convincingly through to have hardly, to no objection inside the Beltway, to this bashing of the world’s second most powerful nuclear nation. Consider that everything in our nation’s capital is always met with controversy. Funny how on the subject of healthcare, or passing a new budget bill, these type of issues are hardly ever to find a common consensus among those kind of issues, but when it comes to Russia there are only but two camps in D.C.. The one camp is the rabid Putin haters, and the second camp are the silent ones.

To wonder where academia is, well just keep up on how various college professors over these past few years, have met their demise by their support for BDS. Since the beginning of the War on Terror I can recall several times when commentators such as Bill O’Reilly picked out some bazaar looking Professor, as to expose the guy as being unAmerican for the learned teacher’s outspokenness against these wars.

I agree Dave, it would be great to have the college professors out in front, but today maybe I saw some reason for hope, for the teaching faculty at Georgetown University took a knee to greet Jeff Sessions before he spoke at the historically famous college. I will say this though, the kneeling was in support of Black Life’s Matter, which is find with me, but where’s the protest against this warmongering breed who has taken the U.S. to this low level of madness we find our country in?

Dave your observing this is important, because the silence is troubling. Joe

Dave P.

September 27, 2017 at 3:10 am

Yes Joe. It is madness. It is disturbing to watch even PBS news, and MSNBC, CNN – which my wife watches for news.
One can not help but think – what has happened to the Country? It is almost in a state of insanity.

Realist

September 27, 2017 at 5:55 pm

To watch the current PBS series on the war in Vietnam, and to note the massive courageous opposition to it at the time, makes me feel like I must be living in a different universe now, where nobody cares about moral principles or even self-preservation of the species. The carnage America has visited upon the Middle East must be approximately comparable now to what we imposed on Southeast Asia. Even after Abu Graib and other undeniable war crimes, Washington is not even hinting at dialing back the violence, but rather upping the ante in North Korea, all along Russia’s borders (especially in the clueless Ukraine) and perhaps even in the South China Sea. The United States has transmogrified into a globalized killing machine… and few seem to care.

As to the business of “taking a knee” during the ubiquitous demonstrations of allegiance now required at every public event throughout this country, that’s yet another thing that has been purposefully mischaracterised by the people who control the future because they control the present and past (i.e., the media). What was meant to protest the far-too-frequent killing of poor black people by an out-of-control militarized police force on the flimsiest of premises has been deliberately conflated into an insult to the flag, to the country, most notably to the American military and the wars it pursues, and to displaying fealty to America’s imagined enemies around the globe, such as Putin, Assad, Kim, Xi and all the other villains painted into the American consciousness by the Ministry of Truth, and honest kids like Colin Kaepernick just hoping to open some eyes are slandered and black-balled by the media and the corporate establishment. Not enough attention has been devoted to those deliberate misdirections by the media in this blog, thanks for the opening, Joe.

Joe Tedesky

September 28, 2017 at 11:40 am

This narrative being promoted by our Divider in Chief, is just plain wrong. In fact a real leader would have come to the front of this controversy by trying to end it. The President in my mind should have simply said to the NFL players to begin standing for the National Anthem once again, because he (the president) is forming a commission of mayors, police chiefs, Black-America activists, and mediators, too study the effects of bad policing. A president with a decent sense of equality would have stuck up as much for the minority community, as he did by defending the various types of racist who showed up to protest the taking down of confederate statues when he defined this group in Charlottesville, as these white supremacist having many good people among them. Besides disliking having Donald Trump in the White House, I’m even more upset that Hillary helped to put him there.

Realist

September 28, 2017 at 9:52 pm

Yes, and the president fuels the madness with his ridiculous remarks. Does he not see that he is sowing the seeds of his own downfall by making them? He would be better off saying nothing on the matter. Your suggestions would be preferable, would be the morally appropriate thing to say and do, but I don’t expect them from a man pitching his every word to the mass media of which he is a creation and thinks he understands better than anyone. And so this country is confronted with conflict at every turn, about everything. At what point it reaches a crisis before things can change for the better, I don’t know.

Watching the end of the Vietnam war on PBS at this very moment, I ask how did we possibly let the madness go full circle again, taking us into wars on the opposite side of the planet which have once again killed millions and for which there is no end in sight? We haven’t yet even reached the end of the beginning in this go round because the American people have yet to achieve the necessary epiphany and rise up against our insane murderous leadership.

Realist

September 28, 2017 at 10:15 pm

Almost forgot to mention. Did you know that Adam Schiff is now blaming the Russians for supporting “Black lives matter” and the whole national anthem bruhaha? He said that on PBS this evening after delivering his usual unsubstantiated screed against them for stealing the election. By making small ad purchases on Facebook (not even substantiated yet now suddenly accepted as gospel and a very very serious matter) and posting some untold number of twitter comments (the latest DNC revelation!) they were somehow able to overturn the Clinton juggernaut and win against incredible odds (the proclaimed 95% probability of a Clinton win by the pollsters). How could Hillary and her $1.4 billion campaign budget be expected to survive against a Russian media blitz like that? Yet the news anchor receives absolutely over-the-top accusations like that with a straight face, expecting you, the viewer, to passively believe it. I despair for this country.

Joe Tedesky

September 29, 2017 at 12:08 pm

Yeah I heard about the Russian interference, now being claimed by the Russiaphobe Adam Schiff, has now even reached our national pass time of professional football. Is there no end to this madness? Seriously talk about critical thinking, isn’t this blame game business getting to the point of too much overkill? Can’t people see through this, due to the over the top campaign to attack Russia for everything and anything, or is everyone that stupid?

You make a perfect point Realist, of how you would think that a country like ours who has embarked on one losing war after another, would wise up. Only, these reflections on pass warring endeavors seems to only spark new energy into the goal of world hegemony. Of course that is assuming that the majority of us citizens see it that way. Saying that, I do wonder to what the American public really does think, as a whole?

The saddest part about the controversy to ‘taking a knee’ when playing the National Anthem at the beginning of a game, is that these taxpayer funded stadiums were built for the sole purpose of having the masses of all strips commingle with each other in a peaceful way. Losing that means we Americans will continue to separate apart while this project to divide us is underway. It is disheartening that our Divider and Chief changed the narrative from one about equal justice to wrongly accusing the ‘taking the knee’ to an offensive gesture against our Armed Forces. So sad.

while it would be great to have parry at the nytimes, given that the editorial psycho ward at that establishment institution often makes the wpost seem free thinking no one should should hang by a lip waiting for that appointment…as far as the rebranding of a ruling class as a deep state, those worrying about fascism should remember that capitalism ruled germany, italy and spain before fascism, during fascism, and after it was “defeated”..yes with a heavier hand for some, and with a better life for some others, but absolutely nothing but the style of ruling political economics was different, as is threatened in europe and the usa because so many are sidetracked into labeling an individual president/leader as a racist, a sexist, a hate criminal etc while remaining oblivious to the global hate crimes of global capitalism, still headquartered here.. but probably not for much longer.

Pete

September 26, 2017 at 9:32 pm

The blind frenzy of those who have ignored the 2000 year old warning of “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?” are hell-bent on world conquest will soon see their chestnuts fried. Even the eternal fires of hell will not sear away the blood of millions of innocents on their blood-thirsty hands. The excruciating pain, despair, lifelong trauma visited upon tiny, defenseless nations by the destruction of their cities with millions of tons of explosives cannot remain one-sided. Stand by for the straw that pricks the cornered Grizzly.

Zachary Smith

September 26, 2017 at 9:27 pm

I’m sure glad Mr. Parry scans the Washington Post and I don’t, for my stomach is on the tender side. But I fear he missed another hot story at the Billionaire Bezos’ site.

“Why bashing Morgan Freeman, of all people, is suddenly the rage in Russia”

Famous but aging actor makes a fool of himself, and people around the world laugh about it.

How is it that all those people are laughing in such a coordinated way?

Answer is of course, RUSSIA.

It has left some experts like Rolf Fredheim, an analyst at NATO’s Strategic Communications Center of Excellence in Riga, Latvia, wondering whether the anti-Freeman blowback was less of an organic reaction than a Kremlin scheme.

“It does look very highly coordinated, because you’re seeing something on multiple platforms at the same time communicating the same message,” Fredheim told Radio Free Europe this week.

Once again, how can The Onion possibly compete with stories like this?

I’ve got to assume this is going to continue. If anything happens which looks even remotely “coordinated”, it must be The Russians.

From a few years back:

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were camping. They pitched their tent and when darkness came, they went to sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night Holmes nudged Watson to wake him and said:

“Watson, look up at the stars, and tell me what you see.”

Watson: “I see millions and millions of stars.”

Holmes: “and what do you deduce from that?”

Watson: “Well, if there are millions of stars, and if even a few of those have planets, it’s quite likely there are some planets like earth out there. And if there are a few planets like earth out there, there might also be life.”

Holmes: “Watson, you idiot, it means that somebody stole our tent.”

If you tell this to a crowd, and if they react in any sort of “coordinated” way, it’s The Russians.

What else could it be? Those two were British, and Britain is one of the 5 Eyes and a great helper in Neocon work. Mocking Brits = Russian dirty work.

Seer

September 27, 2017 at 2:17 am

Who could have known rabbits could dig this far down?

D5-5

September 26, 2017 at 9:08 pm

It’s more bullshit. More deflection, smoke, cover, maneuvering.

Herman

September 26, 2017 at 8:59 pm

“A difference, however, from the McCarthyism of the 1950s is that this New McCarthyism has enlisted Democrats, liberals and even progressives in the cause because of their disgust with President Trump;”

A slightly different take: I think that many Democrats, liberals and progressive are delighted with President Trump, because the conservative causes, including rapprochement with Russia would have been a real threat to their orthodoxy. Just as Obama’s Obamacare set back the cause of universal health insurance, all the rational conservative policies go down with an inept President.

Nor do I think Trump is being excoriated by the important media or important people because of his behavior however inept, it just makes it easier and suggesting it is Trump and not what he might do is misleading. It began with demonstrations before his inauguration and claiming criminality in talking to Russians that tipped the hand of those furious that someone might blow their world apart.

Zachary Smith

September 26, 2017 at 8:49 pm

For instance, a Post editorial on Tuesday shifted the blame for the anemic victory of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the surprising strength of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) from Merkel’s austerity policies, which have caused hardship for much of the working class, or from her open door for Mideast refugees, which has destabilized some working-class neighborhoods, to – you guessed it – Russia!

Allow me to present a theory which just popped into my head. Sugar Daddy Billionaire Jeff Bezos must be telling his “Editorial Board” to write this stuff, and because he is so good at everything he does, he must have a good reason.

WHAT IF Mr. Bezos wants to take over The Onion. Driving down that site’s internet traffic would surely bring down the selling price.

How can The Onion possibly compete with stories like this WP editorial?

How can $100,000 for facebook ads make a dent in that even if it was paid by Putin out of his own pocket? Unless Clinton’s $1.4 B was not put to good use? just saying…..

Explaining away Clinton’s loss without damaging her reputation as the most qualified person ever to run for president and finding excuses to hang on to the group of powerful wealthy contributors to her presidential campaign and to the Clinton Foundation, might be playing a role in all this. Who knows……..

Kiza

September 26, 2017 at 8:36 pm

I like to reverse-logic official statements. Now let me understand this – it is a problem that the Russians supposedly helped Merkel’s competitor, the AfD Party. Does this not strongly point towards Merkel being a candidate who belongs to the US Deep State, in other words a US puppet? I am really glad that they are promoting the Russian interference in the German elections, because it will not take long before most Germans cotton on to who owns their chancellor, those who did not know this already (obvious for years).

The stupidity of the would-be rulers of the world is astounding, but unfortunately it appears that their slaves are even dumber.

Brad Owen

September 27, 2017 at 7:16 am

Ahh…but to whom does the U.S. Deep State belong???….To the Old World Oligarchs of Europe, primarily the British Faction, with a lot of “RatLine” help from the German (AKA Holy Roman Empire) Faction, thanks to the Dulles brothers and their “Wall Street” (a branch office of City-of-London) wannabes. I see the Synarchists Plan “B” unfolding as reported: after the Synarchist fiasco of WWII, the “BoardRoom” NAZIs decided (IMMEDIATELY after WWII) to “sh*tcan” FDR’s O.S.S. guys and fill in our intelligence community with MI6 and RatLine approved Wall Street ,Ivy League, “white shoe”, intelligence operatives, straight from their Wall Street Houses of Finance, to gear up for the capture of USA, via Red Scare tactics. So, we end up with corporate fascists (Synarchists) warning us to be on guard against those Commies and Russkies (the BoardRoom NAZIs taking over the country in the process, securing American strength for WWIII to bid for global takeover against the last holdout: the Eurasian Quarter). Plan “B” is still in progress.

D5-5

September 26, 2017 at 8:21 pm

This third iteration of Red Scare and McCarthyism2 is similar to the 50’s hysteria, and reveals an unhealthy nation in the grip of opportunistic manipulators. As to so-called liberals and progressives (thanks Annie for your comment) back then there was a tendency to be silent (it was a frightening time–recall Arthur Miller and his play The Crucible, based on witch hysteria in Massachusetts in the 1690’s) vs today’s tendencies for these so-called types to join in to the hysteria for the sake of expressing their repugnance for Trump. There were loyalty oaths and such and a profound flag-waving, self-righteous, rabid nationalism. Of course these sentiments continued (though dwindling) in the era of MLKing, but simultaneously came the peculiar uprising of the 60’s, now most vividly recalled through its music. That moment emphasized awareness, intelligence, consciousness expansion, moving forward, not backwards.

A healthy nation does not employ automatic group-think and loyalty oaths to respond to critiques of government policy, or diagnosis of underlying currents in special interest groups corrupting the country. Indeed, the healthy nation welcomes these critiques and engages in vigorously questioning and evaluating them. Obviously, in the spirit of the very system of governance the nation is supposedly founded on, questioning and evaluating are essential, although they will require the possibly unpleasant chore of having to think.

The constitution speaks of “equality” and the right of freedom of expression. These are rights for behaviors that lead to progress instead of knee-jerk emotionalism. The country’s land and its history and its symbols are entirely a separate matter from whoever has seized governance at a particular time, and is behaving in ways to corrupt the traditional values of the country’s progressive idealism. This distinction is ignored or blundered over by the likes of Trump and McCarthy at the same time they are aware, cynically, of how this stance appeals to automatic thinking and saluting.

The current Red Scare asks citizens to consider the possibility a massive distortion and manipulation has occurred, unleashed when the hideous secret that Hillary Clinton and the DNC had been corrupted was revealed courtesy of Julian Assange. This is its origins, as manipulative and ruthless as anything McCarthy did, or Nixon. Given tendencies to deceive the public over the past half century it is strange to see the docile response, as with trolls in CN claiming the Russia influence is “established fact.” The crooks are running more and more scared now, and the official intelligence agencies dragging their feet, but slowly (thank you Susan Sunflower above) the truth is emerging.

I thank you Robert Parry and my colleagues here in this forum.

RnM

September 27, 2017 at 9:38 am

Good post, D5-5.
In your “healthy nation” description, I would add that these big-picture debates should take place in freely elected representative bodies. The fact of the latest Russian (and other countries) sanctions, (a monumentaly bad output from the Legislative Branch, having passed all-but unanimously, with neither public debate, nor any input from the public), is evidence of advanced internal decay of the democratic republic, as set out in the Constitution. How does stripping the Executive Branch of its ability to conduct foreign and trade policy improve our international standing? Imagine a House sub-committee negotiating a technical trade deal with the Chinese? The US is in deep doo-doo.

D5-5

September 26, 2017 at 7:50 pm

b who runs the Moon of Alabama site has a similar view to Parry’s on the WAPO’s view of the German election (and as always comments recommended):

Thank you all for your thoughtful responses and comments. They provide a lot of useful additional ways to think about our current situation, here in the U.S. and the rest of the world. We need to keep thinking, reflecting, and communicating — Hopefully, others will catch on that the boogey-man isn’t some simplistic couple of crappy guys (current favorites Trump and Putin) but this ongoing historical system of capitalism that keeps making it worthwhile for the few and the next rungs down to keep plundering the earth and exploiting the many for their own benefit, continually working out “fixes” to keep the system propped up, leaving all of ys on the path to extinction.

Susan Sunflower

September 26, 2017 at 7:18 pm

Recommend Richard Wolfe “on fire” on RT tonight — are we at the end of capitalism …. can’t find a link to youtube.. but while this “new mccarthyism” hysteria probably (not) the sort of death-throes ravings what one might hope for … the reality is that we are past pablum, nostrums, teaks and “fixes” — none of which are still “operative” …
Wolfe here is in fine form ….

Annie

September 26, 2017 at 7:15 pm

People who are registered democrats often see the party as liberal, when in fact it is not. Under Bill Clinton’s administration the party was pushed even further to the right. I know many democrats who define themselves as progressive or liberals, and have bought into the nonsense that Russia rigged the US election. I never perceived these people as progressive, or liberal and most kept their mouths shut throughout the Obama administration, although he engaged in policies, and practices that no real progressive, or liberal would, or should find acceptable. If they were liberal or progressive in their thinking why would they be so vulnerable to propaganda? Why would they be so easily manipulated if they were truly progressive in their thinking, or not be able to see things from a broader perspective? To me many democrats simply hate Trump, and can’t accept that their whining, war candidate lost. And how can you define yourself as progressive when you supported Hillary Clinton in the first place? We should be careful how we use the word liberal, or progressive. It was under the Obama administration that the new cold war really got underway.

Lois Gagnon

September 26, 2017 at 8:25 pm

Totally agree Annie. I just learned the other day that the ultra right wing Koch Brothers funded Clinton’s Democratic Leadership Council that turned the Democratic party sharply to the right.

It seems like there has been a long slow mind numbing process taking over the liberal “side” ever since. The level of hypocrisy of condemning wars by Republican presidents while supporting or ignoring wars waged by Democrats reached its zenith with Obama. After all the human disasters he oversaw, he’s still treated like a rock star. Mystifying.

Litchfield

September 26, 2017 at 11:11 pm

Yep. You are right in all of your points, and well taken.
Who are these sheeple of the Dem party?
obviously they cannot think for themselves. They are not liberals or progressives.
I don’t know what they are.
Maybe SJWs who fall for every buzzword.

Sam F

September 27, 2017 at 6:00 am

They are fashion seekers who want to be thought of as liberal but in fact do not care at all for anyone. So they “struggle” for trans bathrooms and longer maternity leaves and natural foods, and let genocides go without comment. That is the “liberalism” of affluenza, a complete fake for the purely selfish.

RnM

September 27, 2017 at 9:14 am

Correct, Sam F. I’d also add “snoots” who simply can’t countenance any culture (dismissed by HRC as ‘deplorables’) as having the gaul to have their voices heard in “our” (the scoots) democracy. The cheekyness of those NASCAR/NFL/pro-wrestling fans to vote against the anointed one!

Annie

September 27, 2017 at 2:46 pm

Oh, right on Sam!!! I didn’t vote in this election, but because I didn’t vote for Hillary, and didn’t get into the hysterics over Trump I was singled out by a very affluent “friend” who severely berated me for not being hysterical over his racism, his anti-Muslim position, and not believing Russia put him in the White House. This is a woman who never said a word against Obama even when he went along with Clinton’s destruction of Libya. Yet, since we were kids she would always refer to people as winners, or losers, and she sees herself as a winner because her husband made quite a bit of money on wall street, and has always cultivated people with money. However she defines herself as a liberal. This liberal wouldn’t even visit an old aunt who lived in a Black neighborhood. Not to mention she cheated her own brother, who has money problems, out of his inheritance when their mother died, and spends most of her life shopping, attending the theater, and travel. I have never known her to contribute time or money to the less fortunate among us.

Realist

September 27, 2017 at 5:01 pm

Sounds a bit like the current season of American Horror Show, which, so far, has been a parody of the presidential election and its aftermath.

Sam F

September 27, 2017 at 8:52 pm

That sounds very familiar. The fake liberal seeks all of the social benefits of an avowed “liberal” position where it doesn’t matter, and an avowed “conservative” position where that is most profitable, with none of the responsibilities. Money=virtue no matter how they get it; they can always buy the symbols of virtues in homes and cars. They can always lie, cheat, and steal to get the money to “prove” virtue, and denounce anyone who doesn’t agree. They can usually buy any protection they need with gated communities and corrupt judges, so who needs constitutional rights? Democracy is a great problem for the rich in a tyranny of economic power.

Realist

September 27, 2017 at 8:43 am

What you are saying is so true, Annie, but far too many people allow these truths to be obscured by the stereotypes they would rather cling to. I look at Obama as the great betrayer of liberal or progressive causes. He was about as progressive as a Wall Street banker investing his yearly bonus on choice foreclosed properties, or Mitt Romney picking the bones of companies he buys to strip of assets.

Dave P.

September 27, 2017 at 11:46 am

Annie – I completely agree with your comments.

Terry Washington

September 26, 2017 at 6:58 pm

The reference to “US dissidents” is ludicrous- they may have been attacked by the likes of FOX TV and Rush Limbaugh, but dissidents in the old USSR faced incarceration in psychiatric hospitals or the Gulag( under Stalin they were simply shot out of hand)!

SteveK9

September 26, 2017 at 7:56 pm

I think Robert is concerned that is where we are going. Could you have imagined 20 years ago, that we would have a ‘Department of Homeland Security’, or would pass something called ‘The Patriot Act’?

@ SteveK9: “Could you have imagined 20 years ago, that we would have a ‘Department of Homeland Security’, or would pass something called ‘The Patriot Act’?”

That was presaged decades earlier by mandatory recital of a loyalty oath by schoolchildren every morning. As though a government were entitled to loyalty rather than being required to earn it.

Fred

September 27, 2017 at 3:42 pm

“As though a government were entitled to loyalty rather than being required to earn it.”

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Dr. Ip

September 26, 2017 at 6:28 pm

I’ve lived in Germany for over 30 years now, and what has been clear since the infamous Agenda 2010 introduced during the reign of the SPD government under Schroeder, and the “reforms” introduced by pseudo-Socialist governments in France, is that the same right wing forces that have captured the US, Poland, Hungary and are threatening France and Spain, have their roots (and subtle support) from the neoliberals preoccupied with wealth creation for the few and the destruction of the social net for the many.

Endless war – a perpetuum mobile cash machine – and the attempt to actually own the whole world, has led to a situation that is an updated version of the corporatist fascism of the 30s and 40s. Destruction of the Left is acceptable because it clears a path toward endless profit, and arousal of the Right is seen as profit-beneficial because the uneducated masses that comprise this sector are in love with the illusion of one day belonging to a group that will allow them to achieve wealth and power. Of course it never will. But the unleashing of their anger and violence against all those perceived as “superior”, especially in intelligence, allows them a catharsis of blood and death which eventually consumes them.

Do you see parallels between the German “centrist” consensus and the American liberal abandonment of the working class (and their “:low-rent” ** concerns)

** the democrats have come to “blame the victim” just as viciously as it used to castigate the “right” for doing … It is starkly the haves versus the have nots. … George HW Bush in the 1980’s believe in the “christian charity” that Merkel seems to espouse … the difference seem to be that Merkel succeeded in averting the much anticipated backlash to her “open door” policy.

I’ve been discouraged by the absence of “moral leadership” … I am (and have always been) an atheist but I’m not intolerant nor am I unappreciative of the potential for good — leading by moral example — by the religious community — liberation theology or sanctuary cities, etc.

Unlike the USA, Germans seem to have taken heart and pride from their “tolerance” and “Christian values” … I won’t disparage that.

Sam F

September 26, 2017 at 7:28 pm

Yes, it is very remarkable that Germany admitted over 80,000 refugees, with the problems that might result. I offered to the Obama White House to take 10,000 Syrian refugees, to establish a refugee community in a poor US city, with adequate surplus government real estate and a minimum budget. No reply.

Susan Sunflower

September 26, 2017 at 7:56 pm

yes, and — as goes unmentioned — the UK and the USA have accepted almost zero migrants, refugees or asylum seekers — the terminology reflecting different and “relative” worthiness … nor have we funded off-shore camps and schools …
Today’s horror is that funds promised for Syrian refugee children — in camps (not crowding out “more worthy” native children — have failed to materialize … link / next

hearts and mind — don’t make me laugh

The big 2016 rush of “migrants’ occurred when the over-winter funding of the camps was reported to deficient (as it had been the prior year) … many of those who “ran for the border” did so because the “promise” was that things in the camps were projected to be worse than the preceding year. (you will be colder and hungrier than you were last winter) …

There is an ongoing horrific, even terminal, moral deficit accruing … I thank Merkel for placing the “dilemma” wrt the migrants in moral terms.

Whitey, Caucasians achieved zero population growth a few decades ago. Whitey ain’t the problem Susan. Pressure cooker immigration, a release valve (?) or stimulus for corporate bottom line? There is nothing moral or holy about it Pope Francis and Jerry Brown not withstanding.

Gregory Kruse

September 26, 2017 at 7:15 pm

It is exactly an update version of corporate fascism of the 30’s and 40’s. Euthanasia can’t be far behind.

tina

September 26, 2017 at 11:06 pm

Danke Schoen, for all you americans who do not know what that means, it means “Thank You”. We love the uneducated! But her E-mails? Ivanka and Jared E-mails…But but but Benghazi!!! We love their emails because….. Oh yeah, I forgot lock her up. Not to worry, Trump is making a fool of our nation and Hillary wrote a book. Is this The twin engine of Harley-Davidson? My evil twin?

LJ

September 28, 2017 at 3:29 pm

Wayne Newton had a hit with that.when Vegas was a stop over in the Desert with a couple Hotels and a few mobsters here and there. Have a couple drinks ahd give it a listen.

Litchfield

September 26, 2017 at 11:09 pm

Thanks for these. I hadn’t heard of Weber. Now I know more about him and his lithography workshop.

Susan Sunflower

September 26, 2017 at 6:18 pm

Here’s a “fun fact”

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The U.S. Department of Homeland Security reversed course Tuesday and told Wisconsin officials that the Russian government did not scan the state’s voter registration system.

Homeland Security told state elections officials on Friday that Wisconsin was one of 21 states targeted by the Russians, raising concerns about the safety and security of the state’s election systems even though no data had been compromised. But in an email to the state’s deputy elections administrator that was provided to reporters at the Wisconsin Elections Commission meeting on Tuesday, Homeland Security said that initial notice was in error.

“Based on our external analysis, the WI IP address affected belongs to the WI Department of Workforce Development, not the Elections Commission,” said the email from Juan Figueroa, with Homeland Security’s Office of Infrastructure Protection.

It wasn’t immediately known if Homeland Security made similar mistakes with any of the other 20 states. Figueroa did not immediately reply to an email seeking an explanation of how the mistake was made.

The nationalists want people to believe they cannot afford the “mutti” state, i.e. the enviable (to americans) European democratic socialist mommy state (with those high-high taxes possible due to good wages and unions and political involvement — even if just in “self-interest”)

So many were ready to break out the champagne anticipating her ignoble and humiliating (thesis proving) defeat … now trying to fashion a new thesis that paints the gains by the right wing party (why would anyone be surprised??) as somehow negating or invalidating her victory. We knew they — the “ultra-nationalists” — were out-there, marching in the street in plain sight. …

The paradox is that the anti-neoliberals seemed to be betting on Merkel’s humiliating defeat as validation … at the same time that the “ultra-nationalists were ALSO betting on Merkel’s defeat to the same end. …

Let’s talk instead about where she (and eventually we) should go … there are no solutions in this late-capitalism, endlessly worsening income inequality in which the incentives for Artiifical Intelligence and robotics remains overwhelming — because — “there is no alternative” to this sort of highly capitalized “progress” … gee let me think what the antidote might be?

don’t mourn, organize.

Danny Weil

September 26, 2017 at 6:04 pm

The world today is much like it was when WWI occurred. We cannot forget it was one hundred years ago that Wilson sent American troops into war with Germany. Everything was blamed in the Germans. People were taught to hate the Germans with a passion. This was the day of Edward Bernays.

Much like 1917, imperialism is failing dramatically. And around the world, fascism is rearing its ugly head.

The problem is how to feed, clothe and provide food and energy to 7.5 billion people. Under capitalism this is not possible. So the need to create an false enemy that can deflect from the looting going on by the plutocrats.

As long as people remain blind, they will never see.

mike k

September 26, 2017 at 6:24 pm

Denial is a key problem. The sheep are being led to the slaughter thinking it’s just a fun holiday.

Sam F

September 26, 2017 at 7:23 pm

Indeed unregulated economic power is a poor way to “feed, clothe and provide food and energy” and perhaps you mean that by capitalism. With adequate regulation, private enterprise can be an efficient motivator, but of course it is seldom so regulated and corruption of democracy sets in.

And yes, the people are blinded by dominance of mass media and elections by the unregulated economic power of oligarchy.

SteveK9

September 26, 2017 at 7:52 pm

Feeding, clothing and providing food to the Worlds population is not a problem at all. We simply have to stop having wars and focus on that. Human technology is so advanced today, we could easily make everyone comfortable.

SteveK9

September 26, 2017 at 7:52 pm

Sorry … feeding and providing food seem a little similar. I should have said ‘providing energy’.

hatedbyu

September 27, 2017 at 10:09 am

steveknine,
good point.

can’t believe how naive people are to think that somehow communists are going to feed a hungry world. does anyone know history?

if people get off this war with everyone kick and start spending their money on businesses that treat people fair much of our problems will go away. the need for people to BAN everything is just a symptom of how brainwashed they are.

usury needs to go too.

ok, off my soapbox

Sam F

September 28, 2017 at 8:04 am

Yes, but the statement about communism should be clarified, because communist China triumphed over almost insurmountable poverty under decades of colonialist capitalism. Communist Cuba made great advances despite constant US subversion and embargoes. The USSR greatly helped India toward overcoming poverty.

Communism is socialism with political one-sidedness, only necessary due to the revolutions and colonialist subversions in which it has originated. It tends to be controlled by those who care for their people, and it does eventually liberalize. Capitalism is a market economy without adequate regulation to protect democratic institutions and advance the public interest. It is controlled by those who do not care for their people, and does not liberalize.

Certainly a combination of the two systems works better than either alone. Both have half of the problem and half of the solution. Taking the best of both worlds, democratic socialism plus a well regulated market economy, eliminates all of the disadvantages. It is easy to maintain democratic institutions and the motivating force of a market economy, under socialist guarantees of the public interest. Advanced democracies do this in various ways.

This is done by:
1. Constitutional amendments restricting funding of mass media and elections to limited individual contributions;
2. Monitoring of public officials and relatives and associates during their lives to eliminate corruption;
3. Mass media corporations regulated to ensure political balance and openness;
3. Controls on import, production and sale of products to ensure durability and honesty in marketing;
4. Controls on the financial sector to eliminate fraud and bubbles;
5. Public health care, utilities, and other essential services where market economies have failed;
6. Public care of the unfortunate, without corruption or over-indulgence.

The only reason that the US does not improve is the corruption of its political institutions by economic power. The only long-term reason that communist states do not become more open, is fear that constant subversion by the US oligarchy and its regime-change foreign policy will subvert their economic advantages. The US oligarchy is the problem.

H.W. Phillips

September 26, 2017 at 9:57 pm

Danny, The world is nothing like it was in 1917. WWI would have never happened if there had been anything approximating modern communication. The King of England, the Tsar and the Kaiser were all first cousins, Queen Victoria’s grandchildren, and historians conjecture if they could have talked and not been on vacation they would have worked it out. German sympathies were very strong in the United States, particularly in the Midwest, almost until our declaration of war. Imperialism didn’t fail in 1917, but some of its actors may have changed, the Japanese in particular were fervid practitioners. And facism didn’t exist as a concept, it wasn’t even a gleam in Mussolini’s eye until 1920 at the earliest.

David

September 28, 2017 at 3:36 am

The communication technologies have certainly advanced over the past century, but this does not mean that we have learned much, if anything, about how to avert mass slaughter of our fellow human beings. I strongly recommend the recent lecture by James Corbett, “Echoes of WWI: China, the US, and the Next “Great” War, delivered in Copenhagen at the Open Mind Conference, Sept. 22, 2017 (Available at Corbett’s Web site and/or youtube)

Susan Sunflower

September 27, 2017 at 12:12 pm

Yes, I think the Woodrow Wilson 14-point plan legacy of helping to keep most of Europe from going communist or trying to do so is overlooked … For all of Wilson’s lies, deals and broken promises, I think his “inclusive” idealistic promise to ordinary people that is still felt today (and may provide some of the origin of American accepted world leadership in anti-communism). European democratic socialism arose to quell the unrest, expectations and dissatisfaction of those same people after the fall of the empires. … Remember all those Frank Capra movies in which Americanism was a non-communist path to egalitarian future. (yes, Capra was an anti-communist)

I know most water in the US is contaminated so I always drink it filtered, but are they now adding something that makes people unable to see the sad realities right before their eyes?! Or is it just plain denial as mike k observes?

Bob Loblaw

September 27, 2017 at 3:18 pm

Americans are the world champions of ignorance.

Catherine Orloff

September 28, 2017 at 2:56 pm

To Danny Weil: Yes, in some ways the world today is like pre WWI. But I disagree that “under capitalism it is not possible” to “feed, clothe and provide food and energy to 7.5 billion people.” Under capitalism AS IT NOW EXISTS” it is not happening, but it is possible through a simple democratic change to our capitalism, whereby land values would become the principal tax base, a la Single Tax of famed and lauded American economist Henry George. That change would make it impossible for people to hoard land – natural resources – (the gift of God to all people), as an investment for future price rise. Perhaps 15% of all valuable land in cities is empty – speculatively held – and if it were subject to hefty taxation, it would become affordable for the start of millions of new businesses, small and large. Then we would not have to feed, house, etc. the billions, they could do it themselves through the billions of new jobs that would become available on the newly-available land, mineral mines, forests, etc. Catherine Orloff Providence

SteveK9

September 26, 2017 at 5:46 pm

It’s been going on since the arrival of the national security state after World War II. At least for decades there really was a contest between Capitalism and Communism, not that it excuses the lying and killing of millions. Now, it’s just a ‘we rule the World habit’. Is it really getting worse? Perhaps so.

mike k

September 26, 2017 at 6:22 pm

It is not only getting worse, we are heading for the WORST.

Erik G

September 26, 2017 at 7:17 pm

I would say that the dominance of economic power over democratic institutions has been completely consolidated since WWII, accelerated under Reagan and after the collapse of the USSR, and has been completed since 911. The article’s conclusion that letting “mainstream media monopolize American political debate” is a greater threat than Trump is quite an understatement, appropriate to new readers.

More even than ‘economic power’ (banks?) it is the intelligence agencies (all revolving around the CIA) and the military-industrial complex. We could make progress in a lot of areas if we could simply stop waging war, overt or covert, but it doesn’t seem possible, partly because the ‘Deep State’ has become smart enough not to wage a war that requires a draft or kills too many Americans. It’s OK to spend trillions though, especially since having the World’s reserve currency allows us to create as much as we need.

Dave P.

September 27, 2017 at 11:41 am

SteveK9 – Your comments: ” It’s OK to spend trillions though, especially since having the World’s reserve currency allows us to create as much as we need.”

That is how we suck the blood of the people of the World beyond the West’s borders – by printing unlimited money, using cheap labor, taking over and exploiting their resources.

The oppressed have also to pay to the oppressor for their own subjugation. That is how we maintain our grand life style – as they boast every day on TV channels and elsewhere – for the top 10%.

During the Soviet days, USSR was a hindrance to this Western Imperialism. And now again some how it turns out that Russia is again becoming the protector of the Oppressed – though they have themselves a kind of makeshift type of Capitalism at this stage.

Sam F

September 27, 2017 at 5:50 pm

The complete economic power of oligarchy (zionists/MIC/WallSt/corporations) over Congress, judiciary, federal agencies, and mass media, results in the”deep state” structure. Doubtless there is further deep state gangsterism.

The US has been dominated by the economic power that arose in the 19th century, because the emerging middle class failed to see that this would corrupt democratic institutions if not severely regulated, and of course oligarchy soon controlled the press and excluded the issue from public debate.

jean

September 26, 2017 at 11:15 pm

What great idea!

You follow that up with petitions we can post on social media.

Kiza

September 26, 2017 at 9:09 pm

I find it truly fascinating that the US Deep State has changed the narrative through its liberal MSM mouthpieces, since Zuckcrook $100K ad saga, that the Russian goal was not so much to elect President Swamp then to saw chaos and discord in US. Let us look at the hidden meaning of this:
1) the Deep State feels confident that President Swamp has been brought under control; only the quasi-liberal wing of the Deep State still wants to impeach him (fat chance now that he is well under control, if he ever was not yet another faux agent of change – YAFAOC)
2) the rulers are truly concerned about the forthcoming challenge to their rule, which would begin as unrest, chaos and possibly a civil war; ironically they are delivering a very powerful tool to Putin by establishing parallels between US sedition and Putin’s words; this means that, if he wanted, Putin could just state some obvious criticisms, a sore point of the US/Global system and this becomes a point of oppression in US; such oppression can ultimately have only one outcome for the oppressors.

In brief, it is always useful to monitor the official statements to deduce what is on the rulers’ minds. They do not appear terribly self confident with their “Putin ate my homework” stories. Putin is both the leader of the hated Eurasia and Putin’s face is morphing into the face of the internal enemy Emanuel Goldstein.

Dave P.

September 27, 2017 at 11:26 am

Kiza – Very astute observations. I agree.

Peter Loeb

September 27, 2017 at 7:22 am

STEVEK9

An excellent comment, “Stevek9”.

To continue responding is to play by the McCarthyist rules. Do I want
to circulate Robert Parry’s excellent article (for the most part)? There
would be a collective reply that “:the Russians are coming” and a
groupthink diversions from WHAT the issues really are (oppression of
blacks in the US—the real point of the NFL—discussions usually hidden
under “Do you like Trump?Do you hate Russia?”And thus not
addressed or an article in Consortium yesterday on the Palestine/
Israeli conflict which was responded to mainly in terms of what
the Russians are doing etc. etc.

I remember the McCarthy era. My Dad had to sign a “loyalty
oath”. There were other forms such as the Harry Truman’s
“the Attorney General’s list”, The Truman Doctrine, domino
theories etc.

The late historian Gabriel Kolko discussed this in the subsection
“Violence and Social Control” of his major work MAIN CURRENTS
IN MODERN AMERICAN HISTORY (part of Chapter 5 of that work).

No one is talking about the raw courage of so many black players
(mostly) who suddenly step away from their roles as entertainers
of the American society to remind us all that the US is considering
the murder of unarmed blacks as “patriotic”…heroic.

Instead, the issue is President Donald Trump and I can guess
that , like Hitler and Mussolini, he loves it with a passion.

What a dirty shame that in the US blacks demonstrating for
justice, for life, are attacked by police funded by the US
via private organizations such as those of Israel which provide
their particular “expertise” in how to oppress minorities —
accompanied by junkets for US law enforcement officials
for “training” in the Israeli “efficiency” in murder, oppression,
and inhuman treatment of those Zionists consider “inferior”
if human at all.

Don’t read the above if you fear that it’s all the
fault of the Russians.

In French one once said “Le revolution se mange”..
(The revolution eats itself (se))

—–Peter Loeb, Boston, MA, USA

Stephen S.

September 29, 2017 at 10:23 am

Great post, Peter.

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